MbUNT PLEASANT BBANOH 



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Class.! ] A^ 
BookJlliA^ 



1 



An 



Irishman's Story 



By Justin McCarthy 

Author of "A History of Our Own Times " 
etc., etc. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1905 

All rights reserved 



MOUNT PLEASANT BEANOH 






Copyright 1904 
By The Outlook Company 



Copyright 1904 
By The Macmillan Company 



Sfet up and Electrotyped. Published October, 1904 
Reprinted December, 1904. 



By Transfer 

0. C. Public Library 

APR 20 vm 






xK 



1 84^?8v' 



DISTRICT CF COLUMBIA PROPERTY 



SDetitcatton 

THIS "IRISHMAN'S STORY" 
'if I DEDICATE 

TO ANOTHER IRISHMAN 
^ MY SON 

? JUSTIN HUNTLEY MCCARTHY 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGB 

L "RIVER OF MY YOUTH" i 

II. MY SCHOOLMASTER i6 

III. FATHER MATHEW 33 

IV. MY EARLY FRIENDS 47 
V. YOUNG IRELAND 63 

VI. THE ROAD OF IMAGINATION 85 

VIL FROM LEE TO MERSEY 100 

VIIL THE "MORNING STAR" 123 

IX. ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 144 

X. MY LIFE IN AMERICA 172 

XL BACK TO LONDON 189 

XIL MEMBER FOR LONGFORD 211 

XIII. MY WORK IN THE HOUSE 225 

XIV. A WANDERING HOLIDAY 241 
XV. LIBERAL COERCION 255 

XVI. HOLIDAYS IN IRELAND 267 

XVII. SOUTH, NORTH, AND WEST 283 

XVIIL THE PARNELL COMMISSION 308 

XIX. COMMITTEE ROOM FIFTEEN 330 

XX. "THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE" 355 

XXI. MY LAST MEETING WITH GLADSTONE 376 

XXIL BROKEN HEALTH 394 

XXIIL RETIREMENT 411 



An Irishman's Story 



CHAPTER I 

" RIVER OF MY YOUTH " 

My earliest memories of life are associated with 
river and sea and low-lying hills, with meadows 
and gardens and distant views of bolder heights 
crowned with some ancient ruin. The river and 
the sea gave me my playground, and I have never 
even in my most recent days caught sight of a 
ruined castle or abbey without finding my mind 
carried back to those scenes of boyhood and of 
youth which made the picturesque surroundings 
of my birthplace. That birthplace was in the near 
neighbourhood of the city of Cork in the south of 
Ireland, and the whole surrounding region was rich 
in delightful scenery, whether the gazer looked 
upon land or water or took in both together with 
the same glance. The river Lee flows down from 
amid the far hills, a narrow stream until it reaches 
the city of Cork, which it passes through, broaden- 
ing as it emerges from the streets and the quays, 
until it pours itself, now a powerful river, into the 

I 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

large harbour then called Cove and more lately re- 
christened as Queenstown, a great bay almost land- 
locked and with one opening between two fortress- 
crowned hills, outside which lies the sea itself. I 
have seen many rivers and harbours in foreign 
countries on this side of the Atlantic and the other, 
but I have seldom looked upon a scene more fasci- 
nating to the eye and to the mind than that which 
was so familiar to my boyhood. My earliest home 
was near the city itself, but it was an easy task for 
us young fellows to get into a boat and work our 
oars until we had reached the harbour and passed 
outside it to the tossing sea. At that time the 
boys I knew cared for little in the way of sport 
which was not associated with the river and the 
sea, with boating and swimming. I do not remem- 
ber that either cricket or football was much of a 
favourite pastime among young lads of our set, 
and although we were all glad to get a chance of 
mounting a horse I do not recollect that we had 
any inordinate passion for races. Our frequent 
intervals of recreation were given up either to 
long exploring rambles about the country or to 
that river and sea which we loved in all hours 
and in all weathers. It may seem somewhat 
strange to speak of boys in an Irish city as indif- 
ferent to the temptations of the racecourse and 
the hunting-field, for all the most time-honoured 
traditions have associated the young Irishman 
with a passion for such sport, but I am describ- 



"RIVER OF MY YOUTH" 

ing only the young fellows who constituted the 
set to which I belonged in those far-off days of 
which I am now writing. The hero of that really 
great Irish novel " The Collegians," when con- 
templating in a moment of melancholy retro- 
spection the delights of his boyish days, dwells 
with a special -rapture on " my boat, the broad 
river, the rough west wind, the broken waves 
and the heart at rest." I think I may allow these 
words to sum up the principal joys of life as 
they presented themselves to the minds and the 
senses of the young men with whom I was best 
acquainted in the years before the great Irish 
famine of 1846 and 1847 had spread its desola- 
tion over the land. 

Our family household consisted of six mem- 
bers, — my father and mother, my sister and 
brother, myself and a dear old maiden aunt, my 
mother's eldest sister, who always lived with us 
and lent an active hand in keeping straight the 
affairs of our modest homestead. I should think 
our condition at that time might well have been 
described by the somewhat familiar phrase of 
"genteel poverty." My father held the ofHce of 
clerk to the city magistrates and had studied law 
a good deal, although, owing to lack of means, he 
was never called to either of the legal professions. 
He was a man of much reading, with a thorough 
love for books and, as I believe, a distinct literary 
gift which might under other conditions have 

3 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

enabled him to win some position as a writer. 
He wrote many poems and essays which I still 
think gave good promise for a literary career, but 
he only wrote occasionally, and never gave himself 
up or had the means of giving himself up to the 
writer's calling. He had had the honour of con- 
versing with Sir Walter Scott when the great 
novelist paid his visit to Ireland. He had met 
Thomas Moore and had some personal acquaint- 
anceship with Lady Morgan and Gerald Grififin 
and the Rev. Francis Mahony, the Roman Cath- 
olic clergyman who won fame under the assumed 
name of " Father Prout." My father was well ac- 
quainted with Latin and Greek, more especially 
with Greek, a language for which he had an in- 
tense affection, and he was familiar with most of 
the great classical authors. Among Latin poets 
he was especially attracted by Horace, and he 
often suggested the quaint and humorous idea 
that Horace ought to have lived in the days when 
the tobacco-plant had found its uses, and that 
some of Horace's poems seemed as if they might 
have been composed while their author was en- 
joying the soothing and inspiring delights of a 
comfortable pipe. 

My father and a small circle of his friends would 
seem to have anticipated in their own studies and 
teachings that revival of the Gaelic tongue and 
literature which is so remarkable a phenomenon 
of the present day in Ireland. He could read the 

4 



"RIVER OF MY YOUTH" 

Irish language and could speak it a little, and 
was well acquainted with its surviving literature. 
He had even studied very carefully that ancient 
Ogham character, the peculiar kind of writing used 
by the ancient Irish and other Celtic races, and 
employed especially on ancient monuments and 
tablets. He made many efforts to instruct his two 
sons in this peculiar form of writing, but I am 
afraid without any marked success so far as we 
two were concerned. He and some of his friends 
formed a local society for the diffusion of this 
knowledge and for the general revival of our 
ancient literature. He knew the whole history 
and the legendary adornings of every old abbey 
and castle in the south of Ireland. One of the 
subjects in which he took the deepest and most 
constant interest was the origin and the archeology 
of those Round Towers which form so peculiar a 
feature of Irish landscape. He wrote numbers of 
articles for local magazines and newspapers on 
this subject, and entered into various controversies 
thereon with contemporary writers, some of them 
men of scholarly and literary eminence. Had he 
given up the whole of his leisure time to these 
studies and writings he might, I feel well assured, 
have made for himself an enduring name in that 
field of work. But he was rather too discursive in 
his tastes, and was now striving to be a poet and 
now an essayist and again a composer of story 
and romance. 

5 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

My mother and sister live always in my mem- 
ory as the ideals of womanhood. Looking back 
as carefully and thoughtfully as I can, I recall no- 
thing in the character of either woman which sug- 
gests aught but purity, sweetness, utter unselfish- 
ness, and loving devotion to every duty. My sister 
seems to me to have had her mother's virtues and 
her father's literary tastes. She was an accom- 
plished French and Italian scholar, and published 
in a magazine a full translation of one of George 
Sand's novels, and several versions of poems by 
Petrarch and Alfieri. She only lived to enter 
upon womanhood. I well remember when we were 
both children her coming to me one day triumph- 
antly with the announcement that she was now 
ten years old, and that in ten years more she should 
be twenty. She had only just passed out of her 
twentieth year when she passed out of life alto- 
gether. She was about a year older than I, and it 
was one of my mother's humorous sayings that 
her daughter — her name was Ely — was born a 
slave, while I, Justin, was born a free man, because 
Ely was born before the passing of the Catholic 
Emancipation Act, while I was born in the year 
after it had become law. 

My brother Frank was three years younger than 
I, and his tastes were rather artistic than literary. 
He had a great ambition to become a painter, but 
at a very early stage of his career he had to work 
hard for a living, and was only able to use the 

6 



"RIVER OF MY YOUTH" 

pencil at odd times and without any chance of 
regular study. He emigrated to America while 
still very young, and settled down in New York 
as an office clerk in what is called a wholesale 
dry-goods store, and he soon got married to a 
gifted and charming American girl. He kept to 
his painting all the time, and succeeded in hav- 
ing several landscapes hung in New York art 
galleries. He reproduced with feeling the beauty 
of American autumnal scenery and foliage, and 
he might probably have come to live by art, but 
he soon had a growing family and was afraid to 
run the risk of giving up his regular business. 
He served on the Northern side during the great 
American Civil War, and although he never re- 
ceived a wound in the field, yet the camping out 
in rains and winds and snow caused some injury 
to his lungs, which proved to be permanent, and 
brought his career to an early close. While he 
was still living and happy, and when the war had 
passed into history, I made my first visit to Amer- 
ica, and there my family and I had constant op- 
portunities of meeting Frank and his wife and 
children. I have the most delightful memories of 
happy days and evenings spent with him and his 
wife in a quaint old house, mainly built of stone, 
which they used to occupy near to the village as 
it then was — I do not know what it is now — 
of Bayonne in New Jersey, not far from New 
York. We spent nearly two years in the States 

7 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

during that first visit, and soon afterwards paid 
a second visit which occupied nearly a year, and 
each time we had the companionship of Frank 
and his wife and children. When I paid my latest 
visit to the States, many years after, Frank was in 
his grave. One of his sons, who bears my name, 
Justin, is already a rising man and holds an hon- 
ourable position in the State administration of 
New York. 

My mother spent her closing years in my Lon- 
don home and was buried in the Catholic cemetery 
at Kensal Green. I ought to say that long before 
my sister's death or my brother's departure for 
America our home in Cork had been reduced to 
something like very genuine and not merely gen- 
teel poverty. I was barely in my seventeenth year 
when I found that on my exertions the support of 
the family had come to depend. I was at that time 
studying for the legal profession in the office of a 
distinguished solicitor in Cork who was a friend of 
our family. Under the new conditions of our life 
it was utterly impossible that I could have any 
hope of getting money enough to pay the amount 
necessary for my admission to the bar, even if 
my family and I could have lived upon nothing dur- 
ing the time of my probation. The ambition to be- 
come an advocate had therefore to be suppressed 
in a moment, and my immediate difficulty was 
how to obtain the means of making even the barest 
living. 



"RIVER OF MY YOUTH" 

Then a friend came to our help. This friend was 
the late John Francis Maguire, proprietor and ed- 
itor of the " Cork Examiner," then as now a flour- 
ishing newspaper. Maguire was by profession a 
barrister, and took a leading part in Irish political 
life. He was for many years a distinguished mem- 
ber of the House of Commons, and there are many 
members of that House still living who would 
gladly, I am sure, bear a cordial tribute to his per- 
sonal character and to the reputation which he won 
for eloquence, earnestness, sincerity, and modera- 
tion in the House during a long period of political 
trouble. John Francis Maguire's suggestion to me 
w^as that I should join the reporting staff of the 
"Cork Examiner" at once, that I should learn and 
practise shorthand, of which I then knew nothing, 
in the ofhce of the newspaper, and he offered to pay 
me the regular salary of a reporter even during the 
time while I was merely striving to gain a know- 
ledge of the reporter's work. That salary was one 
pound a week to begin with. This was the gener- 
ous offer of a friend, and I need hardly say that it 
was accepted with gratitude. My family had now, 
at all events, something to live upon from week to 
week, while those of us who could work were trying 
to develop their capacities for working. My sister 
gave lessons in French and Italian to some girls in 
the city, and my brother got some very poor clerk- 
ship in a local business. Thus the serious work of 
life began for us. 

9 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

I have anticipated by many years a great part of 
the story of my family and shall have to make allu- 
sion now and again in the progress of my narrative 
to events already mentioned in this opening chap- 
ter. My desire is to spare my readers as much as 
I can the passages of merely domestic interest, 
which, although they formed very often the most 
momentous and engrossing events of my life, have 
yet no fair claim on the attention of the public. 
The loves and the sorrows of most men and 
women have a common origin and nature, and 
my object in writing this volume is to tell rather of 
what I saw and heard than what I felt as I worked 
my way through life. Mine, I may say at once, has 
not been a life of much adventure, nor has it been 
diversified by many ups and downs, but it has 
given me opportunities of meeting many men and 
women about whom the world will always be glad 
to read, and of taking part in some political and 
literary movements which are likely to be subjects 
of study to succeeding generations. I have lived 
through great changes in political systems, in scien- 
tific thought, and in national development, and it 
has been my good fortune to know something of 
many or most of those who in these countries 
and in some foreign states as well had much to do 
with the creation of the new chapters in practical 
and intellectual development. 

The set to which I belonged in these younger 
days of mine was especially and even intensely 

lO 



"RIVER OF MY YOUTH" 

literary and artistic. The comrades with whom I 
mostly associated either belonged to the class who 
had to make a living by law or medicine or jour- 
nalism or painting and sculpture, or were the sons 
of men thus engaged. We were nearly all poor, 
but we all belonged to families in which education 
counted for much and where scholarly studies al- 
ways found encouragement. There was little chance 
then of university education for the Catholic youths 
who made up the rising generation of Irishmen. 
The education of the young fellows whose parents 
could not afford to pay for their schooling was 
chiefly conducted by the monks of the various or- 
ders, and these seem to have done their work of 
teaching marvellously well. I can positively affirm 
that among the young men who were my closest 
companions and whose parents almost all belonged 
to what I may describe as a struggling class, there 
was not one who could read only the English lan- 
guage. We could read our Latin and make some- 
thing of our Greek, most of us could read French, 
some few Italian, and many of us were already 
taking to the study of German. Few of us pro- 
fessed to speak any of these foreign tongues, and 
indeed hardly one of those whom I knew had ever 
then been outside the limits of the British islands ; 
but so far as the reading of books went we scorned 
to confine ourselves to a mere acquaintance with 
English literature. I have seen a good deal of 
the world since those early days of which I am 

II 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

writing, have mingled in many different communi- 
ties, and I can positively say that I have never met 
with a set of young men more happily endowed 
with literary tastes and more given to steady lit- 
erary culture than that which I can well remember 
in my native city during those far-off years. 

My father was so enterprising as to prevail 
upon a local bookseller to start a monthly period- 
ical entitled the " Cork Magazine." Our city had 
already boasted of so pretentious a publication 
as a quarterly review all to itself. It was called 
" Bolster's Quarterly Magazine " from the name, if 
I remember rightly, of the bookseller who ventured 
on the experiment of its publication, and my 
father used to contribute regularly to its pages. I 
believe it flourished for a considerable time, but it 
was not likely to accomplish quite a paying suc- 
cess in so small a community and it had passed 
out of sight before the founding of the " Cork 
Magazine." To this later periodical my father 
contributed a romance constructed from Irish 
history, and I may say that my own first effort at 
story-writing appeared in its pages. I have often 
in later days regarded it as a somewhat curious 
fact that the hero of that narrative bore the name 
of Parnell, although I need hardly say that the 
Parnell, who was long afterwards to be my polit- 
ical leader, must have been but an infant at the 
time. Parnell, however, was the Christian name 
of my hero. My sister contributed poems of her 

12 



"RIVER OF MY YOUTH" 

own and translations from French and Italian to 
the " Cork Magazine," and more than one young 
writer who afterwards made a certain mark in lit- 
erature first appeared before the public in these 
same pages. 

We had two well-organised literary societies in 
Cork, the older of which was named the Cork 
Literary and Scientific Society and the younger 
the Cork Historical Society. The older institu- 
tion flourishes, I believe, up to the present day, 
but the younger has long since passed, let us hope 
in music, out of sight. The Literary and Scientific 
Society was conducted chiefly by the elders of the 
city, although it welcomed the membership and the 
intellectual efforts of the youngsters, but the strong 
national feeling which was then reviving in the 
south of Ireland made most of us young fellows 
rather impatient of its non-political character and 
the steady loyalty of its opinions. The influence 
of the Young Ireland movement was then begin- 
ning to be very powerful in Dublin and through 
all the southern and western regions of the island, 
and we young men were eager for a literary asso- 
ciation in which we could give some expression 
to our patriotic impulses and yearnings. There- 
fore the Historical Society was a sort of secession 
from and revolt against the grave and colourless 
respectability of the earlier institution, and we who 
formed the newer organisation could not endure 
the restrictions placed upon our impassioned elo- 

13 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

quence. The Young Ireland movement had risen 
against the steady constitutionalism of Daniel 
O'Connell's latest days, and " The Nation " news- 
paper, founded by Charles Gavan Duffy and John 
Blake Dillon, father of my dear friend the John 
Dillon of our present time, and inspired by the 
poetic genius of Thomas Davis, had quickened 
with a new life the national sentiments of Ireland. 
A fervour of patriotic emotion filled the hearts of 
Irish boys as well as men in that animated and 
eager time. The movement set going by " The 
Nation," and maintained by all newspapers of the 
same order since those days, was literary as well as 
political, and we were all filled with the ambition, 
we young fellows, to be readers of books and 
makers of verses as well as to be upholders of the 
Irish national flag. It was an intensely romantic 
period for the youngsters at least, and there was a 
generous ardour about it the mere recollection of 
which might well recall deep emotion in the hearts 
of those oldsters among us who can still remember 
the period when Thomas Davis and James Clar- 
ence Mangan were sounding the chords of the 
national harp. I always associate the time of that 
national and literary revival with the river and 
the hills and the sea which made the charm of 
my native city. Most of the young men whom I 
then knew wrote verses and fondly believed that 
they were destined to become poets. The air 
seems to have been instinct with music and with 



"RIVER OF MY YOUTH" 

poetry, and looking back now upon that time I see 
the world I then knew was a world of youth and 
patriotic sentiment and hope. To adopt a charm- 
ing phrase once used in a speech by the late Lord 
Granville, no one ever was so young as we were 
then. 



IS 



CHAPTER II 

MY SCHOOLMASTER 

I MAY say at the outset that I had more than one 
schoolmaster in my boyish days, but there was 
one and one only to whom I owe any teaching 
which was of value to me in my after-life, and to 
whom I owe the beginning at least of any literary 
or scholastic instruction it was my good fortune 
to acquire during a life much occupied in the 
reading and study of books. It is a curious in- 
stance of the mystic laws of association that when- 
ever I think of that gifted teacher and dear friend 
there comes up into my mind a picture of the Par- 
thenon at Athens, that noble monument of classic 
antiquity, with which I became well acquainted at a 
later period of my life. The explanation of this con- 
nection of ideas is found in the fact that in the 
private room of my dear old teacher there was a 
beautiful miniature model in white marble of the 
Parthenon as it stands on the Acropolis. My boy- 
ish eyes were fascinated by this model from the 
first moment when I looked upon it, and my 
teacher was delighted to tell me all about it and 
its history, the scene it adorned and the noble lit- 
erature it illustrated, and thus to arouse in my mind 

i6 



MY SCHOOLMASTER 

a longing to know more and more about Greece 
and its literature and art. The incident in itself 
serves very well to explain the kind of influence 
which my teacher always endeavoured to exercise 
over his pupils. His idea of teaching was first of 
all to awaken in his pupils a sincere desire to 
learn. His firm conviction was that all methodical 
teaching is of little avail unless it can arouse in the 
pupil that sympathetic desire to become taught 
and to profit by the instruction. 

The first school I attended for some years was 
a kind of public seminary in Cork, where we went 
through the ordinary course of elementary instruc- 
tion in English grammar, arithmetic, mathematics, 
geography, the use of the globes, and all the other 
recognised subjects of necessary education for 
boys. We had to commit all sorts of rules to 
memory; we got everything "by heart," as the 
phrase goes ; we had to repeat over and over again 
every lesson thus taught to us ; and no particular 
trouble was taken to discover whether or not we 
attached any real meaning to the phrases which we 
had to patter out word by word. We had to inform 
our teacher again and again that language con- 
sists of orthography, etymology, syntax, and pros- 
ody ; we had to state in the words committed to 
memory the difference between an acute angle and 
an obtuse angle ; and to repeat without hesitation 
the words which describe what is a continent, what 
is an island, what is an isthmus, and so on. Those 

17 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

of us who had fairly good memories were soon able 
to repeat these formularies word for word, and 
then we were advanced to learn something else on 
the same principle and after the same fashion. 
Most of us little boys were quite content when 
we could repeat the various definitions mechan- 
ically, and we gave ourselves no concern about 
the meaning of what we were saying or indeed 
disturbed our minds by a thought as to whether 
it had any meaning whatever. I hope that there 
were some little boys in the school who had 
intellects of a more inquiring order, and who 
therefore derived some benefit from the lessons 
thus drilled into us ; but I can confidently say for 
myself that I never took any thought upon the 
subject and regarded my daily task merely as a sort 
of penal process to be got through as a matter of 
discipline during the weary hours of school work 
allotted to each day. My heart was filled, as I am 
sure the hearts of most of my comrades were, with 
a longing for the hour when the end of the day's 
school-teaching should come and bring with it 
freedom to return to the out-of-door amusements 
which we loved and the books which we really 
cared to read. I spent some two years, I think, 
at that school, and I can confidently assert that I 
learned as little as it was possible for any human 
being to learn even under such conditions. Then 
my father grew impatient that I should begin to 
have what used to be called a classical education. 

i8 



MY SCHOOLMASTER 

My English scholastic studies came to an unprofit- 
able end, and I was removed to the only other 
school I ever attended, and put under the care of 
the schoolmaster by whom for the first time I was 
really taught how to learn. 

My schoolmaster — my only schoolmaster as I 
may well call him — was a Cork man named John 
Goulding, who had been educated for the priest- 
hood, and had, I believe, spent some years in 
Rome, but owing to ill health had been compelled 
to give up all hope of becoming a priest and 
undergoing the severe labours of such a calling. 
Mr. Goulding must have been some seventy years 
of age when I first found a place in his school- 
room. My recollection of him is that his face ap- 
peared to be much older than his figure. He was 
a tall man, — stood quite six feet high, I think, — 
and his form was one of strength and symmetry, 
while all his movements were quick, active, and 
vigorous. His face was clean-shaven, and his head 
and high forehead were crowned by a mass of 
thick white hair which even yet had not quite had 
the curl taken out of it. The general expression 
of the face when he was not speaking was thought- 
ful and even melancholy, but when he spoke with 
animation his eyes lighted up with an inspiriting 
brightness. He was fond of movement, and even 
while examining his pupils or explaining some 
subject to them it was his common habit to walk 
rapidly up and down his room, and indeed he 

19 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

seldom remained seated for any great length of 
time. Yet there was nothing fussy or even impet- 
uous about his movements — they only illustrated 
his physical vigour and mental activity, and they 
never marred the grace and dignity which be- 
longed to him. In order to obtain a living, he had 
opened a school in Cork, where he received and 
educated the sons of his friends and of those others 
to whom his capacity as a teacher was well known. 
In a novel of mine published not long ago and 
entitled " Mononia," I have described this teacher 
of mine under the name of " Mr. Conrad." In that 
book I gave at greater length than is necessary 
for my purpose in the present volume some 
account of the man himself and of his ideas and 
plans on the subject of education. I may say that 
he taught upon a system which so far as I know 
was but little practised in the schools of a provin- 
cial town in those far-off days. To begin with, he 
repudiated altogether the practice of corporal pun- 
ishment, a process which at that time was devoutly 
regarded by most people as an absolutely essential 
condition to the proper bringing-up of boys. He 
excluded the idea of any manner of punishment 
from his teaching, and would not even condemn 
his pupils to a penal prolongation of studies or to 
retention at their desks after the usual hour for 
the conclusion of the day's task. He was entirely 
opposed to the general idea of compelling boys 
to get long lessons by heart, and to prove their 

20 



MY SCHOOLMASTER 

acquisition of knowledge by the mere repetition of 
words. His great object was first to get the boys 
to understand what they were listening to and 
what they were talking about, and then to feel a 
genuine interest in each subject and a sincere 
desire to know more and more about it. He took 
care to make every subject perfectly clear to the 
minds of his pupils and to arouse in them a living 
and an enduring interest. He taught us Greek 
and Latin grammar as we went on studying the 
text of an author, — he taught us these languages, 
in fact, just as a child is taught his own native 
language. We read to him appointed passages 
from a classic author, first in the original tongue 
and then in our efforts at translation, the teacher 
helping us with every word and explaining its refer- 
ence to the other words in the sentence. He asked 
us many questions and encouraged us to put to 
him as many questions as we wished. He eluci- 
dated every sentence by explanations and com- 
ments of his own. He told us all about the places 
and the people and the literature represented in 
the volume we were studying, and frequently got 
us to explain how we understood each passage and 
what ideas it gave to our minds. He described 
to us the scenes and the life which each chapter 
illustrated, and by the help of his own travels 
and personal observation he was able to illumine 
every subject and fill it with a living interest 
for us. 

21 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

An ordinary observer, if he happened to be in 
the school-room at the time, might have felt 
somewhat surprised to find the teacher engaged 
to all appearance in a mere conversation with his . 
pupils over some Latin or Greek book and not per- 
forming any of the work w^hich is conventionally 
regarded as the proper business of an instructor. 
By this somewhat unusual process of teaching, 
Mr. Goulding was able to awaken in the minds 
of his boys a keen and animated interest in every 
author whom we were studying, and to make us 
anxious to read more and more and learn more and 
more of the books which were brought under our 
notice. One result of this was that we all made it 
our business and found it our pleasure to spend a 
great part of our evening hours at home in study- 
ing and re-studying the text and following the 
author into passages which had not been yet 
brought under our notice by the teacher. We 
were thus able to tell him next day what we had 
been doing and how much we had learned out 
of school. Mr, Goulding, who had been expecting 
some such result, was sure to ask us every day 
what progress we had been making without his 
help, and we repeated to him our efforts at trans- 
lation and talked them over thoroughly with 
him. A natural and not unwholesome rivalry thus 
sprang up among us. Each boy felt anxious to 
show that he had read more and understood 
better than some of his comrades, and thus the 

22 



MY SCHOOLMASTER 

very effect was produced which Mr. Goulding most 
desired to create — the effect of making us self- 
teaching as well as taught. Of course there were 
boys of nature too indolent and indifferent to get 
the full benefit of this kind of education ; but Mr. 
Goulding thoroughly understood that there were 
some boys who were not likely to learn much of 
anything under any system of instruction, and he 
was not prepared to sacrifice the capacity of the 
brighter boys by keeping them down to a mere 
routine system which could only leave them on a 
level with the inferior intelligences. Those of us 
who really wished to learn were thus led on to 
be students on our own account and for the genu- 
ine love of the books we were reading. Many of 
us spent much of our leisure time in reading on 
and on through the authors set before us, and 
even to the study of books not yet set out for us 
as a part of our school instruction. I know that 
for myself my interest in Caesar's " Commentaries " 
was made so quick and genuine that I had read 
the whole of the work long before we at school 
had made much progress with the text, and that 
I began the study of other books which had not 
yet become a part of our regular course. If a boy 
showed himself hopelessly apathetic or stupidly 
unwilling to learn, Mr. Goulding generally repre- 
sented to the parents of such a boy that there was 
no use in trying to make him a student of Greek 
and Latin, and that he had better be removed 

23 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

from the school altogether, and set down to some 
other course of instruction which might appeal 
to whatever intelligence he had in him. 

The great result of his system of teaching was 
that it filled us with a desire to understand and 
appreciate every author we read, and to expand 
our field of knowledge. Mr. Goulding talked to us 
of the great English as well as the great classic 
authors, and he had much to tell us about every 
book, which helped us to understand and to feel 
attracted by its subject and its place in literature. 
He gave no prizes or rewards of any kind for 
success in any branch of study beyond his own 
encouragement, approval, and praise ; for he always 
explained to us that the best reward of reading, 
when well chosen, came from the reading and the 
knowledge itself. I suppose that I should have 
been, like many of my schoolmates, a reading 
boy in whatever case, for I was always intensely 
fond of books ; but I do not believe that I should 
ever have gained in the same short time under 
a different system of teaching such a love for 
the best in literature as Mr. Goulding's educa- 
tion awakened in my young mind. In this way 
I acquired while still in the years of boyhood a 
good general knowledge of all the great Greek 
and Roman authors and an intense love for their 
books, and I soon became able to read fluently 
for my own delight the masterpieces of Greek 
and Roman epic and tragedy. When at a much 

24 



MY SCHOOLMASTER 

more advanced period of my life I had many 
opportunities of being in Italy, and once travelled 
a good deal through Greece, I found it again and 
again borne in upon me that I owed much of my 
intense interest in the monuments and the mem- 
ories of these regions to the early influence of 
Mr. Goufding's teaching, and to the manner in 
which he was able to illustrate every subject and 
bring it home to my intelligence and my heart. I 
do not venture to say that Mr. Goulding's method 
of teaching was directly adapted to create a thor- 
oughly scholastic knowledge of Greek and Latin, 
and I do not know whether his pupils would have 
been likely by means of his instruction alone to 
take high honours in any university competition, 
but I know that it made all of us who had a taste 
for such study ready and fluent readers in Greek 
and Latin and as familiar with most of the Greek 
and Latin poets as with Shakespeare and Keats. 
It was in truth literary rather than scholastic in- 
struction ; but as such it suited me and most of 
my comrades quite well enough, and I think was 
something which did high credit to a small school 
in an Irish provincial city. 

Mr. Goulding made each of his boys keep a short 
diary, which was to tell of any book he had read 
out of school and give some account of the im- 
pression it had made on him. Every day as each 
class was called up according to its order of study; 
the business began by the reading of these diaries. 

25 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

Each boy in the class read his diary, and then 
the teacher started some conversation as to the 
book or books we had read. Mr. Goulding invited 
the questions and comments of the boys and 
asked questions and made comments of his own, 
and there was generally very instructive talk over 
the subjects which thus came successively under 
notice. The object of the teacher was to find out 
how far the boys had got in their understanding 
and appreciation of the authors they had been 
reading, and to excite an inspiring rivalry among 
them in these literary avocations. Sometimes the 
books were Latin, sometimes but not so often 
Greek, occasionally French, and very frequently 
English. Again and again we were much surprised 
at the power of memory Mr. Goulding displayed 
and at the accuracy of his knowledge with regard 
to the precise wording of some of the passages 
read to him. A boy, for example, had set down 
in his diary a citation from some author which had 
given him particular delight, and almost every 
day it happened that Mr. Goulding was able to 
correct from his own recollection some inaccuracy 
in the copying of the quotation. It was my own 
ill luck on one occasion to record in my diary 
some lines of Gray's immortal " Elegy in a Coun- 
try Churchyard," telling how knowledge to the 
eyes of many " her ample page, rich with the spoils 
of time, did ne'er unroll " and how " Chill penury 
repressed their noble rage" — and then I am sorry 

26 



MY SCHOOLMASTER 

to say that I finished my attempt at quotation 
with the words " and curbed the genial current of 
the soul." Mr. Goulding asked me with delight- 
ful gravity, whether I thought Gray was quite 
happy in his metaphor when he spoke of curbing 
the genial current of the soul, and whether I did 
not think that "froze the genial current of the 
soul " would have been a better way of expressing 
the idea. Of course I saw instantly the mistake 
I had made, and the laughter of my young friends 
added to my humiliation. Then, to adopt the famil- 
iar newspaper phrase of to-day, the incident was 
allowed to drop and we had an interesting talk 
over the Elegy itself, and the general meaning and 
use of metaphors. 

Now I am not citing as an instance of remark- 
able memory the fact that our teacher was able 
to correct at once so absurd a mistake in lines 
familiar to every lover of English literature ; but I 
mention the correction merely because it illustrates 
his manner of teaching. The result of my mistake 
was to give occasion for a discussion that quick- 
ened the perceptions and expanded the knowledge 
of those who listened to it and took part in it. I 
feel sure that I thus became the undeserving oc- 
casion of an insight into the meaning and value 
of metaphor which was never likely to be lost on 
the minds of my young class-fellows. I do not 
think any of us from that time forth ever failed to 
understand the use and the meaning of metaphor, 

27 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

although in the ordinary way of school-teaching 
we might have learnt the word from a dictionary 
without having the faintest comprehension of its 
meaning. To get at our minds and our intelli- 
gences was always the great object of our teacher, 
and to give us a new idea was of more account 
to him than to cram us with any number of 
equally parroted names and dates and citations. 
Mr. Goulding loved light literature, and, unlike 
many solemn provincial teachers of his time, was 
ever ready to encourage his pupils in the reading 
of fiction, provided always that the fiction was 
wholesome in its general effect. He delighted in 
the novels of Scott and of Dickens, and Dickens 
was then but a newcomer in English literature 
who had not yet won his full recognition among 
the more serious order of school-teachers. Mr. 
Goulding knew that boys will be boys, and he 
liked them to be boyish in the true sense. 

I remained a pupil at Mr. Goulding's school 
until it became necessary that I should begin to 
make a living for myself, and, as I have already said, 
it was my father's desire as well as my own that 
I should begin to study for the law. An oppor- 
tunity was given to me by a kindly friend of our 
family, a lawyer in large practice, who allowed 
me to study in his chambers without having to 
pay any fee for my legal education. I shall never 
forget the day of my leaving Mr. Goulding's 
school, and the kindly words of encouragement and 

28 



MY SCHOOLMASTER , 

sympathy he gave to me on my entrance into the 
world of actual business. I did not quite under- 
stand at the time, although I came to understand it 
well afterwards, how thoroughly he appreciated the 
difficulties which stood in the way of my admission 
to the profession of the law. Even at the time, 
however, I could see that Mr. Goulding had some 
doubts as to the possibility of my becoming a reg- 
ular student of law, and thus obtaining entrance 
to the bar. Mr. Goulding knew well, much better 
than I did then, that there was little probability 
of my being able to keep to any study not bringing 
in some regular and immediate remuneration, 
or of my family being able to pay the large fees 
which were then an indispensable preliminary 
condition of admission to the legal profession. 
There was therefore a certain melancholy tone in 
his words as he spoke of my immediate prospects ; 
but he encouraged and stimulated me to make 
the very best of the favourable opportunity thus 
presented to me, and he assured me again and 
again of his confidence that I would never give 
up altogether the literary studies for which he 
believed me to have some natural inclination, or 
allow what I had learned of Greek and Roman 
letters to lose its influence over my mind and my 
ways of life. 

I took leave of Mr. Goulding and his school 
with the deepest regret. I saw him often afterwards. 
He was a frequent visitor at our home, and his 

29 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

friendship was never lessened by any of the 
worldly troubles which soon came upon us. He 
knew before I did that I should have to encounter 
a youth of hard work and of struggle against pov- 
erty, and it was this knowledge which gave to our 
farewell talk, as I left his school, the melancholy 
tone I was not then quite able to understand. He 
passed away from life not many years after our 
separation, but he never passed out of my recollec- 
tion, and it is no excess of words to say that his 
memory and his influence are with me still. I think 
John Goulding was in his quiet and modest way 
one of the most remarkable men I have ever 
known. He was certainly the most remarkable man 
I have ever known who actually came to nothing 
so far as worldly success was concerned. I have 
not met any man who, on the whole, could give 
evidence of a larger amount of intellectual accom- 
plishment. He had some knowledge of the litera- 
ture of all European countries, ancient and modern, 
and he could talk about Scandinavian poets and 
Russian theorists as well as of the Greeks and the 
Romans, the English and the French. What little 
I have seen of his original writing seems to me 
to give proof of genuine literary capacity, and yet 
he never even tried to write a book or sent contri- 
butions to any literary periodical of established 
position. I suppose it may be taken for granted 
that if he had possessed a really creative faculty for 
literature, his capacity would have forced itself into 

30 



MY SCHOOLMASTER 

recognition, and he would have done something 
to make his name known. He was in any case a 
man singularly devoid of all ambition for personal 
advancement, and from many casual scraps of con- 
versation I came somehow to the conclusion that 
he had probably measured his own faculties with 
a cool and steady judgment, did not find that he 
had the literary qualities which could make for him 
a genuine success, and did not care to interfere 
with his own regular way of life and the calling to 
which he was devoted for the mere sake of taking 
a part in the every-day work of literature. With all 
the sweetness and brightness of his temperament, 
his keen humour, and the pleasure he took in con- 
genial companionship, it seemed to me that there 
was ever a prevailing tone of melancholy in his 
life, and I have often been led to the belief that 
some profound disappointment must have come 
upon his earlier career. This idea impressed me 
so much that when in the novel I have already 
mentioned I put my memories of him into the 
form of one of my characters, I told my readers 
that he had in his early life loved deeply and loved 
in vain, and had therefore settled down to a quiet 
career of resignation and steady benevolent work. 
But I have never known or heard anything about 
Mr. Goulding warranting such an assumption, and 
I only mention the literary liberty I took with his 
memory as illustrating the kind of impression he 
had made upon my mind. There are few men with 

31 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

whom I have ever been brought into companion- 
ship to whom I owe a higher debt of gratitude 
than that which I acknowledge to my one school- 
master, and can only thus repay. 



32 



CHAPTER III 

FATHER MATHEW 

Among the literary and educational institutions 
of Cork city at that time which had influence 
upon the boys and young men whom I knew, one 
of the most influential and successful was the 
Temperance Institute, founded and maintained 
by Father Mathew. The Temperance Institute 
consisted chiefly of a large hall, a library, and rooms 
for reading and wnting, an4 it, was used especially 
as a place of evehihg'resort foi, those who followed 
the leadership of Father Mathew in the teetotal 
movement. The object of the noble-minded Father 
Mathew was to establish an institution in which 
young men and boys might pass their evenings 
and devote themselves to reading, study, and the 
intelligent interchange of ideas. Its members, 
however, were not exclusively of junior years; for it 
was the especial wish of Father Mathew that the 
seniors should also devote as much of their leisure 
time as they could to the rooms of the Institute, 
and should have the opportunity of encouraging 
their juniors in their studies and pursuits. The 
centre hall of the Institute was spacious, hand- 
some, and well appointed, and was used on certain 

33 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

evenings in every week for the delivery of lectures 
and for the discussions of a debating society. The 
young men with whom I was chiefly associated 
were usually working hard at schools or in offices 
or warehouses or shops all day long, and it was 
Father Mathew's object to provide them with a 
place where they might spend their evenings agree- 
ably and instructively. Most of the younger mem- 
bers of the Institute were coming to that time of 
life when the temptations of the outer world are 
most seductive and most full of danger. No one 
needs to be told that there is no temptation more 
perilous for young fellows in a city than the 
absence of any opportunity for occupying their 
leisure hours and being , left in constant puzzle- 
ment as to what tQ, ^o with, themselves in the long 
evenings. 

The library of the Temperance Institute was 
of considerable size, and contained really a very 
liberal and well-chosen assortment of cyclopaedias, 
histories, books of elementary science, memoirs of 
eminent men, globes terrestrial and celestial, and 
many maps. The elders came amongst us a great 
deal and talked with us, helped us with our read- 
ings, and gave us all the information we sought of 
them ; but it was Father Mathew's especial wish 
that they should not seem to press any studies upon 
us or act as if they were set over us like intellec- 
tual drillmasters. Father Mathew had a strong 
confidence in the common desire of young men 

34 



FATHER MATHEW 

and boys to cultivate their natural intelligence 
when the opportunity was placed easily within 
their reach, and he quite understood that the pre- 
sence of the perpetual schoolmaster, professional 
or otherwise, would not be likely to advance that 
end in an institution designed in the first instance 
for rest and recreation. He visited the Institute 
very often himself and talked with its members, 
always in the friendliest and easiest way, and 
entered thoroughly into all the ideas and pursuits 
of the young. The Institute was well supplied with 
newspapers and magazines, and I well remember 
that it was there I first made the acquaintance of 
" Punch," which was then still in its earlier years. 
There used to be lectures given occasionally, or 
essays read by-m'eri\h.er^ of. the Institute, chiefly, 
however, by the younger members, because it 
was Father Mathew's wish that these should be 
encouraged from the very first to develop whatever 
literary gifts they had, and not to regard them- 
selves merely as pupils brought together to be 
lectured by their elders and superiors. When the 
hero of the evening had read his essay or delivered 
his speech, it was then the custom for the members 
generally to raise a discussion on some subject 
which it brought into notice. In these debates the 
elders were quite free to bear a part, and indeed 
I have heard Father Mathew himself offer his own 
spontaneous contribution to the evening's contro- 
versy. 

35 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

The Apostle of Temperance was a man of a 
striking and even a commanding presence. He 
was not very tall, but he was of shapely form, and 
his head and face had something statuesque in 
their mould. We used to say in the Institute in 
those days that Father Mathew had a head which 
seemed like that of a Roman senator, and I can 
well imagine that head surmounting some classic 
statue. His order of mind was not intellectual in 
the higher sense of the word, but he was endowed 
with a clear and vigorous common sense, and with 
a wealth of sympathy and a love for the human 
race which was ever at the service of his fellow 
men. He was not eloquent as a speaker either in 
the pulpit or on the platform ^ and he never made 
any attempt at rhetCrical effect; but he had the 
inspiration which made his simplest words sink 
deeply into the heart ; and if he never spoke a bril- 
liant sentence, so also he never uttered an unmean- 
ing commonplace. He had the rare and happy 
faculty of at once touching the hearts and quick- 
ening the understandings of those with whom he 
held converse. Whether he talked to a peasant on 
the roadside, or a little boy in a school, or a vast 
assemblage from a public platform, it was certain 
that the full meaning of every sentence he spoke 
would reach its mark at once. I have often thought 
in later years that in the simplicity of his nature 
and the straightforward integrity of his purposes 
Father Mathew greatly resembled John Bright, 

36 



FATHER MATHEW 

although of course the Apostle of Temperance 
had not the gift of eloquence which belonged to 
the great English orator. Thackeray in his " Irish 
Sketch Book " makes mention of having several 
times met Father Mathew in Ireland, and appears 
to have been greatly charmed by the sweet simpli- 
city of his manners. Thackeray took particular 
notice of the fact that when he met Father Mathew 
at a private dinner-party, the Apostle of Temper- 
ance always found occasion to exchange a friendly 
grasp of the hand and a few genial words with the 
butler or the footmen, to make benevolent inquiries 
of them concerning their wives and children, and 
to show a kindly acquaintance with their domestic 
affairs. 

My own knowledge of Father Mathew was close 
and intimate for many years. I was little more 
than a child when I accepted from him the tem- 
perance pledge and was invested with his own 
silver medal, the badge of the order. I was a fre- 
quent visitor at his house, and he often came to 
see my father and mother. He was ever ready to 
lend a helping hand by advice or personal inter- 
vention when a friend was involved in any sort of 
difficulty, and in the houses of the very poorest it 
was noticed that whenever serious trouble came 
on, Father Mathew was sure to appear like a pro- 
tecting angel. With all his horror of drunkenness, 
with his lifelong devotion to the cause of total 
abstinence from all intoxicating drinks, Father 

37 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

Mathew had a never-failing patience with and 
pity for the drunkard. No matter how often an 
unhappy man might have broken his pledge and 
gone back to his evil habits, Father Mathew was 
ever ready with forgiveness and renewed hope, 
never despairing of the weakling's possible re- 
demption. He had no words of reproach or even 
of stern condemnation for the sinner who had 
fallen back into sin, but only spoke in language 
of tender remonstrance and of sweet encourage- 
ment to renewed and happier effort. It was this 
very attribute of unfailing sympathy and sweet- 
ness that made Father Mathew's influence all but 
magical over those with whom he had any influ- 
ence whatever. 

The Temperance Institute was but a type of 
the organization which Father Mathew formed 
and kept going in every division of the city, which 
spread itself, in fact, all over the country and into 
every other country where Father Mathew's influ- 
ence prevailed. The poorest regions of Cork city 
had their local temperance societies and halls and 
temperance bands. All that kind of organization 
which was adopted afterwards by Cardinal Man- 
ning for the spread of the total abstinence doctrine, 
and by General Booth for the work of the Salva- 
tion Army, was anticipated by Father Mathew and 
watched over carefully and closely by him. The 
smallest and the poorest of these temperance halls 
provided a place where the young could have fre- 

38 



FATHER MATHEW 

quent meetings, could listen to instructive dis- 
courses, could have their tea-parties and even 
their dances. Father Mathew was a full believer 
in the importance of securing for the young ample 
opportunities of harmless amusement, and he was 
never more happy himself than when he saw a 
number of young people made happy in this in- 
nocent and wholesome way. There used to be 
great temperance meetings held in various open 
spaces within and around the city and in country 
districts everywhere. There were long proces- 
sions on the occasion of these meetings; the pro- 
cessions were led by bands of music; and each 
organization bore the distinctive name of its lo- 
cality. One natural result of this was that there 
grew up a keen and commendable competition 
amongst the different temperance societies for 
the display of their numbers and their discipline, 
and for the reward of a smile and a word of praise 
from the apostle himself. The whole population 
caught fire from the enthusiasm of each central 
body, and a village would have felt ashamed of 
itself if it could not establish a temperance hall 
and marshal a temperance band. Nothing within 
my recollection was more wonderful and more 
nearly complete than the success of Father 
Mathew's temperance movement. It pervaded 
every town and village throughout the whole 
island, spread itself with marvellous rapidity all 
over England and Scotland and Wales, and worked 

39 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

its way across the Atlantic wherever Irishmen were 
settled in the United States and Canada. Its 
effect upon the habits of the people soon became 
evident even to the most superficial observation. 
A large proportion of the population utterly fore^ 
swore drunkenness and all manner of intoxicating 
drink, and I am firmly convinced that the influ- 
ence of Father Mathew's movement has never 
ceased from that time to this to exercise its whole- 
some power over the people of Ireland. 

We had, however, some little troubles, by the 
way, in our Cork Temperance Institute. That 
Institute was supported by a large number of 
citizens who held a certain position in Cork, and 
who made it their habit to spend some time there 
of an evening for the purpose of talking with the 
young fellows and helping them with their literary 
arrangements. The Institute was so constituted 
as to have a president of its own, whom the mem- 
bers were to elect from time to time, for Father 
Mathew was the president of the whole temper- 
ance organization and not of the comparatively 
small society which met in the Temperance In- 
stitute. The only trouble the Institute had in my 
time arose because of the vagaries of its first pre- 
sident. This president was a Cork man by birth, 
who had studied for the bar and been admitted 
to practice. His name was one which afterwards 
became well known to the general public of Eng- 
land and to the public of many countries out- 

40 



FATHER MATHEW 

side England, for it was Edward Vaughan Hyde 
Kenealy. Edward Kenealy was undoubtedly a 
man of brilliant talents. He had cultivated many 
fields or at least gardens of literature, and he had 
acquired a knowledge of Latin and Greek which 
perfectly dazzled us youngsters who were then 
trying hard to make good way with our classical 
studies. He wrote showy verses, and indeed ven- 
tured on poetic drama, and was fascinating and 
forcible as a public speaker. One of his humorous 
literary achievements was to take some comical 
Irish ballad, like that, for instance, then known as 
" Brian O'Linn," and turn it into what we boys 
thought a perfect reproduction in Aristophanic 
Greek. He was an advocate of teetotalism, and 
took a leading part in the organizing of the Tem- 
perance Institute. He was therefore elected its 
first president, and delivered an address in the 
Institute hall which seemed to me, and I believe 
to all the young men who heard it, a perfect mas- 
terpiece of eloquence and imagination. 

After that opening night Kenealy was in the 
habit of visiting the Institute very often of even- 
ings, and got into the way of talking to us and 
giving us his advice about our studies and our 
amusements. Personally, I had but little inter- 
course with him because I was one of the young- 
est among the boys and for the most part escaped 
his notice. But I soon began to hear murmurings 
among some of the older boys, and afterguards 

41 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

among the mature men who frequented the Insti- 
tute, as to the kind of influence Kenealy was 
endeavouring to exercise. I had but vague ideas 
at the time as to what it was all about, but so far 
as I could learn, our distinguished president was 
somewhat cynical and scofhng in his mode of dis- 
course, and was inclined to turn into ridicule many 
subjects which the members of the Institute and 
all good citizens were taught to hold especially 
sacred. Many of the elders in the Institute began 
to regard Kenealy's influence as decidedly unedi- 
fying, and as precisely the sort of influence which 
Father Mathew would most have wished to banish 
from any association under his control. The result 
of all this was that among the older members, 
independently of any feeling that might have 
been in Father Mathew's own mind, there grew 
up a strong determination that some effort must 
be made to relieve the Institute from the presi- 
dency and the influence of Kenealy. After many 
murmurings had been heard, a general meeting 
of the Institute was convened, at which Father 
Mathew was invited to be present, and there one 
of the most influential members brought forward 
a motion, amounting in substance to a vote of cen- 
sure on Kenealy and a demand for his resignation 
of the oflice he held. I should say, perhaps, that the 
members of the Institute were not all Catholics, 
and that amongst the seniors a very considerable 
portion belonged to the Protestant Church and 

42 



FATHER MATHEW 

to Protestant dissenting denominations. The man 
who proposed the vote against Kenealy was a 
leading member of the Unitarian body. Father . 
Mathew always took care to make it thoroughly 
understood that he welcomed the members of all 
religious creeds to the fellowship of his temper- 
ance organization, and he had a great regard for 
the Unitarians, who, though they differed more 
widely from him in faith than any others who 
belonged to Protestant denominations, were always 
conspicuous for their devotion to any cause con- 
cerning itself with the improvement of the moral 
life of the population. I can remember Father 
Mathew once saying to me of the Cork Unitarians 
that *' they are good men, they are noble-minded 
men, they help us in every work for the moral 
benefit of their neighbours, and I am only sorry 
that they cannot be with us altogether." There 
was a long debate on the vote of censure, as I may 
call it, to which we the juniors were allowed to 
listen, although I presume we had not the right to 
exercise a vote on the question. Kenealy defended 
himself in a long and eloquent speech in which 
he seemed to throw himself altogether on the 
consideration of the members, and he made a very 
touching appeal that he, then a young man, as 
he certainly was, whose whole career depended 
on his character and his credit, should not be 
harshly judged and sent forth to the world with a 
slur upon his reputation. Father Mathew relieved 

43 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

the Institute from the necessity of coming to any 
decision by accomplishing a sort of mild and mer- 
ciful coup d'etat. We youngsters were not much 
consulted by our elders on the whole subject, but 
the general impression was that Father Mathew 
was unwilling to inflict on Kenealy the disgrace 
of a downright vote of censure, which would cer- 
tainly have been carried by a very large majority if 
the question had come to such a test. He declared 
that as he had formed the association he had a 
right to dissolve it, and accordingly he announced 
its dissolution, with the hope and promise that it 
should soon be called into being once again under 
conditions more favourable to a long and bene- 
ficent vitality. So the Institute was dissolved for 
the time and was soon recalled to existence, and 
on this renewal of its life Kenealy did not offer 
himself for election as one of its members. With 
this remarkable exception the Institute became 
just what it had been before and went its useful 
way. 

Kenealy's restless temperament brought him 
into other troubles not long after, but he soon 
left the country and settled in England, where he 
followed his career at the English bar, to which 
he had been admitted. He once offered himself 
as a candidate for the representation of Cork city 
in the House of Commons, and he came over to 
Cork to advocate his claims in person. I was at 
that time a member of the reporting staff of the 

44 



FATHER MATHEW 

" Cork Examiner," and I attended several of 
Kenealy's meetings and had many talks with him. 
He was a fascinating talker as well as a brilliant 
public speaker, and he seemed to have an unlim- 
ited faith in his own capacity and his own future. 
He had not a chance, however, of being elected 
to represent his native city, and the constituency 
in general passed over his claims with absolute 
indifference. He issued a parting address to the 
people of Cork, in the closing passage of which 
he declared that " in the foreign country where my 
lot has been cast I never have ceased and never 
shall cease to think of you," and expressed a hope 
that he might always be remembered by them 
with kindly recollection and genial wishes. After 
that time I never met him until we came together 
in a division lobby of the House of Commons after 
he had been elected as representative of Stoke- 
upon-Trent and I had taken my seat as one of 
the members for the county of Longford in Ire- 
land. His public career was well known, rather 
too well known, for a long time to the people of 
these countries. He took a prominent part as the 
advocate of the once famous Roger Tichborne; 
he started a weekly newspaper which he described 
as " edited by Kenealy " ; he got into trouble with 
the leaders of his profession, and was the object 
of more than one sharp personal denunciation in 
the House of Commons. He was unquestionably 
a man of remarkable and varied ability, and if he 

45 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

had been endowed with higher principles and with 
steadier purpose, he might have made for himself 
an honourable reputation in literature, or at the 
bar, or in the House of Commons. As it was, he 
became but the comet of a season, and a comet of 
somewhat lurid and fitful light. 



46 



CHAPTER IV 

MY EARLY FRIENDS 

I ALWAYS have been, so far as my recollection can 
tell me, and I always shall be, so far as my hope 
and trust can assure me, a lover of books. My 
memory does not go back to a time when I did 
not love to get a book into my hands and turn 
over its pages, and I can safely say that this incli- 
nation of mine was in working force even before 
I was quite able to read the printed words on the 
pages. We were a reading family, and we lived 
among a reading set. I have never been in any 
social circle on this side of the Atlantic or the 
other where a greater love for literature and art 
prevailed than was to be found among those with 
whom I chiefly associated during the twenty years 
or so of my unbroken residence in Cork city. 
The Cork people were intense lovers of music, 
and some of us whose taste inclined rather to 
literature or to pictorial art used to grumble now 
and then because of the supremacy which the 
majority of our population gave to the craft of the 
musician. " The fact is, we are drenched with 
music in Cork," was the discontented utterance of 
a young friend of mine who believed he had a gift 

47 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

for literary composition, but did not succeed in 
attracting large audiences to listen to his essays 
in one of our literary societies. But we were un- 
doubtedly great lovers of painting and sculpture, 
and we had in our Royal Cork Institution a re- 
markably fine gallery filled with casts of the great 
masterpieces given to the world by the hand of 
the sculptor. Nor am I inclined to admit that 
we thought less of literature than of any of its 
kindred arts, and indeed the dream of most of 
the young men I then knew was the dream of suc- 
cessful authorship. My recollection of talks about 
books goes back as far as my recollection of talks 
about marbles or hoops or paddling in the river. 

An event of moment in my life was my first 
making the acquaintance of Shakespeare, or per- 
haps I should rather say of Othello. My father, 
who had a good library of his own, had a strong 
objection to the study of what I may call grown-up 
authors, like Shakespeare for instance, by my sister 
and brother and me. He had a theory that such 
authors were apt to do harm to the very young 
by suggesting subjects concerning which nothing 
ought to be known until a later period of life. He 
appears to have been under the impression that if 
you could keep such books from the sight of the 
young, the young could never learn anything 
about the objectionable subjects from their daily 
intercourse with human beings. Therefore a vol- 
ume of Shakespeare never came in our way, but 

48 



MY EARLY FRIENDS 

we were allowed to study, if we felt so inclined, the 
little book, Dodd's " Beauties of Shakespeare." I 
wonder whether many English homes now contain 
a copy of the Rev. Dr. William Dodd's " Beauties 
of Shakespeare"! This volume was made up of 
short passages taken from the plays, and of course 
free from all lines or words which could suggest 
unwholesome ideas to the mind of childhood, but 
at the same time separating each passage from 
any connection with the story of the play. Dodd's 
book was in fact a very useful and welcome pocket 
companion for one who already knew the plays 
of Shakespeare well, but was glad to have at hand 
a means of frequent reference to the author's 
thoughts and words. 

I must confess that I cared nothing whatever 
about Dodd's " Beauties of Shakespeare." I was 
only in the age for listening to and telling stories, 
and the exquisite beauty of these isolated passages 
from Shakespeare failed to make any impression 
on my little mind. But it so happened that among 
a pile of old paper-bound pamphlets and other 
such booklets one day I came upon a separate 
copy of " Othello." It was a small book with a blue 
paper cover and having an old-fashioned steel en- 
graving as its frontispiece. The engraving repre- 
sented as its principal figure Othello on his land- 
ing in Cyprus — a black man in a corselet of mail 
and girt with a sword. That was enough for me. 
The black, mail-clad man with the sword excited 

49 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

at once my ardent curiosity, and I carried off the 
little volume to my bedroom and there studied the 
tragedy of "Othello " from beginning to end. The 
edition was not intended for the use of children 
and had undergone no process of expurgation, but 
I can positively say that it excited no unwhole- 
some curiosity or unhealthy feeling of any kind in 
me, and that I was wholly absorbed in the tragic 
beauty of the story, in the noble character of 
Othello, and in the exquisite loveliness and the 
devoted nature of Desdemona. Never, to the end 
of my life, can I forget the impression made upon 
me by the first readingof that little book. Through 
it I entered into the world of poetry and of ima- 
gination — the world of Shakespeare. For a con- 
siderable time, however, I knew no play of Shake- 
speare but " Othello." In the mean time I became 
acquainted with the " Arabian Nights," in the once 
familiar old version translated from the French of 
M. Galland and rendered what was considered 
suitable for family reading, and the memories of 
that land of mystery and magic have haunted me 
throughout my life. I am afraid that even the 
masterly and perfect translation by my old friend 
Sir Richard Burton could not give to my mature 
years the same fresh delight that my early boy- 
hood found in the cheap edition put into unschol- 
arly English which was my first introduction to 
the realms of the Sultan and the Genie and the 
fairy, of Aladdin and his wonderful lamp and the 

50 



MY EARLY FRIENDS 

marvellous horse of brass. Curiously enough, my 
third love in literature was " Robinson Crusoe," 
which might have seemed comparatively common- 
place and prosaic after the " Arabian Nights " — 
and then came Walter Scott's novels, and so on 
into an ever expanding world of fiction. 

The novels of Alexandre Dumas the elder had 
an immense fascination for many of us youths 
in Cork. The Count of Monte Cristo became our 
favourite hero. Some of us did our fond best to 
model ourselves after the fashion of Monte Cristo 
as he appeared when he returned to the living 
world of Paris after his long imprisonment and his 
strange adventures in foreign lands. We should 
have been only too glad if we could have made 
ourselves in any way like him while he was pass- 
ing through these mysterious adventures ; but as 
we could not even in our own minds imagine our- 
selves as partakers of such experiences, we found 
that the best we could do was to imitate him as 
far as practicable in his dress and deportment 
during the later years of his story. Monte Cristo, 
for instance, never lowered his heroic dignity to 
the commonplace and trivial enjoyment of the 
dance, and a few of us after we had made his ac- 
quaintance believed that we were doing something 
towards our transformation into heroes of romance 
when we announced our resolve to take no part 
in the frivolities of the ballroom. Again, the 
Count of Monte Cristo when he appeared in even- 

51 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

ing dress always wore a white waistcoat and had 
his watch suspended by a single narrow thread 
of gold chain. So far, at least, it was easy for us 
to imitate our model, and with our white waist- 
coats and our thread of gold we were able to fancy 
ourselves Monte Cristo to the life. After all, we 
were no worse but in many ways much better than 
the youths of an elder era, who believed that they 
were doing something very fine when they tried to 
get up their dress and their deportment after the 
fashion adopted by the Prince Regent who became 
George the Fourth. 

We had keen rivalries in our literary societies 
and in our debates at the Temperance Institute. 
Among my companions of those days were some 
who afterwards made themselves conspicuous and 
won a name in the serious struggles of life. One 
of these was the late Sir John Pope Hennessy, who 
entered the House of Commons very young, soon 
became an especial favourite and protege of Mr. 
Disraeli, was afterwards appointed to several high 
positions in the Colonial service of the Govern- 
ment, went through some years of important work 
as Governor of Hong Kong, became the hero of 
many fierce controversies, and, towards the close 
of his life, gave up the Colonial service and returned 
to the House of Commons as one of the champions 
of Home Rule for Ireland. During the long num- 
ber of years which passed between my early friend- 
ship with Hennessy in Cork and our sitting side 

52 



MY EARLY FRIENDS 

by side in the House of Commons as brother mem- 
bers of the Irish National Party, there intervened 
the greater part of a lifetime for both of us. In his 
closing years he spent much money in acquiring 
the ownership of a castle and a fine demesne within 
sight of Cork harbour, a demesne in the grounds 
of which he and I had often wandered as boys at 
a time when he could have had little hope indeed 
of ever becoming the owner of the place. He did 
not long survive his return to parliamentary life. 
We used to meet incessantly in his later London 
days, and I have never known a more delightful 
companion. He was a brilliant talker, was gifted 
with high animal spirits which never flagged to 
the very last, and he was rich in anecdotes of his 
observations and his experiences in various parts 
of the world. 

There were some others of my early Cork asso- 
ciates the story of whose lives recalls to me more 
tragic memories. I remember one young fellow 
named Maxwell Sullivan, the son of a retired mili- 
tary officer, Captain Sullivan. Captain Sullivan had 
seen much service abroad, and was the only man I 
knew at that time who had actually fought a duel 
and wounded his man. When I knew him he was 
a delightful old gentleman — we thought him very 
old at that time, although as his eldest son was still 
but a very young man he could hardly have been 
regarded as a type of extreme antiquity. Captain 
Sullivan was one of the elders who took a deep in- 

53 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

terest in the Temperance Institute. He came there 
night after night to talk with the boys, to help to 
form their manners, to guide their studies, and to 
tell them animated stories about all that he had seen 
and done during the course of his more active life. 
He was always very gracious to us boys, although 
there was a certain air of dictatorship about him 
which kept us on our good behaviour when he 
condescended to mingle in our society. He was 
rigorous in the exercise of his rule as to our man- 
ners and our behaviour, and criticised our efforts 
at literary debate with a certain outspoken severity. 
Maxwell Sullivan was one of his younger sons, and 
I well remember the impression Captain Sullivan 
once produced while Maxwell was endeavouring 
to distinguish himself in a debate. Maxwell was 
rushing at his subject with an earnest volubility 
which somewhat affected his utterance, when his 
father from his seat in the hall suddenly called 
out the admonition — "Speak slowly, sir, and dis- 
tinctly, and then we may have some chance of 
understanding what you are trying to say." 

Poor Maxwell Sullivan, who was full of energy, 
courage, and love of adventure, afterwards went 
out to the United States and served on the side of 
the North in the great American Civil War. He 
lost his life there, although not in actual battle, yet 
as the result of battle and on the very field of fight. 
He had taken part in many engagements, and, hav- 
ing been wounded in one of them, he was borne by 

54 



MY EARLY FRIENDS 

comrades to a tent and left there to rest, with the 
hope that he might recover from the effects of 
his injuries. But through some disaster or other, 
as I have been told, the tent a night or two after 
caught fire, and before the wounded man could be 
rescued from the danger, he had suffered such 
harm that his brave life came to an end. It would 
better have suited his gallant spirit to meet with 
death in the actual fight, but he had none the less 
died for the cause to which he had devoted himself. 
He was not, indeed, the only one of my friends in 
boyish days whose career came to an end on one 
of those American battlefields either on the side 
of the North or on the side of the South. Some of 
my early friends of those days became victims, too, 
in other fields of war. I had a cousin, Thomas 
Wallis, who with his two brothers and his sister 
were among my close associates during all my ear- 
lier years. Their home was by the Blackwater, 
among the scenes which Spenser has made immor- 
tal in poetry, and there I spent many holidays, and 
first learned from Tom and his brothers how to 
swim and how to ride, and how to get the best 
I could out of life in the open air. Tom Wallis 
studied for the bar and was actually called, but 
had no taste for the legal profession; he married 
early, and was early left a widower, and afterwards 
obtained a commission in the army, and prema- 
turely closed his military career as one of the first 
victims of the fatal fire on the boats at Cawnpore. 

55 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

Other friends of mine in those early days made 
themselves conspicuous afterwards in more peace- 
ful fields of competition. While I was a member 
of the House of Commons I used to meet very often 
there on the benches and in the division lobby 
with a friend and namesake of mine, the late John 
George MacCarthy, who made for himself a dis- 
tinguished position in Parliament by his eloquence 
as a debater and his intimate knowledge of all sub- 
jects which concerned the interests of his native 
country. 

My oldest and dearest friend in life — he has 
but lately passed out of life — was Thomas Crosbie, 
who in his early years became a reporter on the staff 
of the " Cork Examiner," and by his great capacity 
and steadfastness worked his way to the editorship 
of the paper, and finally succeeded John Francis 
Maguire as its proprietor. Thomas Crosbie was 
during his later years one of the most honoured 
and distinguished citizens of his native Cork. He 
raised the influence and the reputation of his jour- 
nal even higher than these had ever been before, 
and he will always be remembered as a leading 
spirit in every movement which tended to in- 
crease the prosperity of his country. He might 
have been elected to Parliament at any time if 
he would only have consented to become a can- 
didate for a seat in the House of Commons. But 
he was always a man of retiring disposition, and 
he would not accept any public career or appoint- 

56 



MY EARLY FRIENDS 

ment. The only office of any kind which I ever 
knew of his accepting was that of President of the 
Institute of British Journalists. The office, I be- 
lieve, is held but for one year, and Thomas Cros- 
bie accepted the distinction when it was offered 
to him. The Institute held its annual meeting 
during Crosbie's term at Buda-Pesth in Hungary, 
and Crosbie had the honour of presiding over its 
proceedings in one of the world's most picturesque 
cities. Tom Crosbie and I were friends from the 
time when we met as small boys at the English 
school — I mean the school for English and 
not classical teaching — where, as I said before, 
I learned nothing. He preceded me as a worker 
in a lawyer's office, the same office as that in which 
I made my uncompleted experiment in qualifying 
for the legal profession. Later still he joined the 
staff of the " Cork Examiner," and there we were 
again for a while fellow workers. During all these 
years I can safely say that we spent the whole of 
our leisure hours in close companionship. We 
rambled together in the country, we made part of 
the same boating and yachting expeditions and 
of the same swimming matches, we belonged to 
the same literary societies, and when we were not 
otherwise engaged, Tom Crosbie spent all his even- 
ings in my home. 

The time came when we ceased to be close com- 
panions, for he remained always a resident of our 
native city after I had gone to seek my fortune 

57 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

in Liverpool or in London, but we continued to 
meet at every possible opportunity in Cork or in 
Liverpool or in London. On the occasion of his 
return from presiding over the Institute of Jour- 
nalists in Buda-Pesth, there was a public dinner 
given by a great literary society in London, at 
which Crosbie and I both made speeches. He 
was then, as always before, especially happy in the 
gift of humorous eloquence. I have heard a great 
many humorous speakers in England, and still 
more successful masters of the art in the United 
States, but I never heard any one who could de- 
liver, on the spur of the moment, a short speech 
more rich in wit and humour than those I have 
heard many a time from my dear old friend Tom 
Crosbie. The curious fact is that he was not and 
never attempted to be an orator in the fuller 
sense of the word. He never made any effort at 
the delivery of a speech which displayed splendid 
language, picturesque imagery, or passionate de- 
clamation. Indeed, he had no inclination what- 
ever for the making of speeches, and hardly, so far 
as I know, addressed a great meeting from a public 
platform. But the vein of rich, delightful, native 
humour always found in his private conversation 
served him in good stead when he had to make a 
short extemporaneous speech like that delivered 
by him at the literary dinner to which I have 
just made allusion. If he had had ambition, I 
am quite certain that Thomas Crosbie might have 

58 



MY EARLY FRIENDS 

risen to hold a high place in the public life of 
his country. But he loved his quiet pursuits, his 
reading of books, his genial hours of association 
with his friends, and the daily work of his news- 
paper had become the main occupation of his ca- 
reer. Under these conditions, however, he rose to 
as high a place as came within his reach, — rose 
to it slowly, quietly, and without effort, — and 
he has left behind him a name honoured in the 
community to which he belonged and in the coun- 
try to which he was devoted with the soul of a 
genuine patriot. He was a wonderfully well read 
man, and he and I for a great many years studied 
the same books and took delight in the inter- 
change of ideas about them. We read Homer and 
Virgil, Aristophanes and Plautus, Moliere and 
Voltaire, Shakespeare and Massinger, Goethe and 
Schiller, Dickens and Thackeray, and most of the 
Italian poets. By a strange stroke of fate Crosbie 
died at a time some years ago while I was still 
weak from the effects of the great sickness of my 
life thus far — a sickness which seemed all but 
certain to bring that life to a close. My family 
and friends by a pious fraud kept me from all 
knowledge of Tom Crosbie's illness, and I was 
not allowed to know until long after my recovery 
that my more than brother had gone to his grave. 
I have never looked upon that grave, and my 
friend still lives in my memory and my heart. 
I had always a strong desire, as I suppose most 
59 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

young men have, to travel in foreign countries, and 
I had also a distinct ambition to make for myself 
a literary career in England. This ambition was 
much quickened by the hard conditions which now 
surrounded me in life. The support of a family 
depended on my exertions at a very early period, 
and I began to think that for the mere sake of 
making a comfortable living I should have to seek 
for literary occupation in London. In any case I 
should have had a great desire to try my chances 
in London, for London was to me a kind of fairy- 
ground, to which my love of English literature 
drew me with an almost romantic longing. I 
longed to become familiar with the London of 
Shakespeare, with the London of Prince Hal and 
Falstaff, of Addison's " Spectator," of Byron and 
Dickens and Thackeray. I was always planning 
some visit to London, but I had to put off the 
realization of this dream from time to time for 
the hard practical reason that I could not then 
spare the leisure or the money for any such 
adventurous expedition. I delighted in reading 
about Westminster Abbey, and the monuments 
of Fox and Pitt, and I sometimes thought that 
my highest desire in life would be gratified if I 
could only hear a great debate in the House of 
Commons. I am afraid I sometimes pestered with 
questions any one of my friends who, like John 
Francis Maguire, could tell me all about the 
House and its ways and its orators. There was a 

60 



MY EARLY FRIENDS 

neighbour of ours in Cork, a most commonplace 
personage indeed, in whom I began to take a deep 
interest for the mere reason that he had in his 
earlier life been occupied for several years in Lon- 
don. He could not be brought to regard London 
in any sense from my romantic and glorifying 
point of view, and gave me only the most prosaic 
and unpicturesque details of his experience in the 
great metropolis. Still it was something to know 
a man who had lived some years in London, and 
who could at least tell me that he had seen the 
Houses of Parliament and other places made dear 
to me by history and poetry and fiction. I remem- 
ber that on one occasion he was telling me about 
the city and the Thames, and he happened to men- 
tion a departure he had made in a boat from Wap- 
ping Old Stairs. This was enough to quicken my 
eager fancy, for I loved the once famous ballad 
about Wapping Old Stairs, and I thought that 
if I could only look upon that spot it would do 
something to gratify my ambition. But when he 
spoke casually of the Temple Gardens, I began to 
regard him with blended admiration and envy. 
The Temple Gardens, — where the red and white 
roses were plucked, where Addison and Steele had 
wandered, which were familiar to Dr. Johnson, 
which had been pictured in so many poems and 
romances, — what would I not have given for a 
sight of that hallowed enclosure ! My brother 
and I used to rhapsodize to each other about 

6i 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

London and a London literary life, and I used to 
pour out to my sister my dreams of the time when 
I should be settled in London and should bring 
my mother and her over to share my home and 
success there. But in the mean time I had to work 
hard for a living, and the daily work of a provin- 
cial newspaper does not lend itself much to the 
encouragement of romantic imaginings. I had 
become at last somewhat of a proficient in short- 
hand. I used to attend the local police courts 
and the public meetings of the local municipal 
bodies, and the Courts of Assize when these came 
to be held, and I was allowed by a gracious and 
kindly editor to publish some stray poems of mine 
in the columns of the newspaper. I shall never 
forget the raptures of my sister and myself when 
one of those poems attracted the attention of the 
editor of a Dublin magazine and procured for 
me an invitation to contribute to the pages of a 
periodical holding high literary distinction and 
published far away in Ireland's capital city. 



62 



CHAPTER V 

YOUNG IRELAND 

My work as a journalist began under depressing 
and inauspicious conditions. I had not long been 
engaged as a reporter on the " Cork Examiner " 
when the earliest evidences of the great coming 
famine cast their gloom over the land. The first 
work of any importance I had to undertake was 
to act as one of the reporters who were sent into 
different parts of the country as " special corre- 
spondents " to describe the devastating effects of 
the failure of the potato crop. It is hardly neces- 
sary to say that in those days the great majority 
of the working population of Ireland were liv- 
ing almost exclusively on the potato, and the sud- 
den failure of the crop paralyzed all the efforts of 
the Irish government and the local authorities to 
resist the encroachments of the famine. It is no 
part of my intention to attempt a history of those 
famine months, which have found ample and abid- 
ing record in many carefully compiled volumes. I 
saw enough for myself to cast a gloom over my 
memory, which even at the present moment can- 
not be recalled without a thrill of pain. It was a 
common sight to see men and women, during 

63 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

that ghastly winter, he down in the streets o£ the 
country towns, and die of actual starvation. The 
parochial and charitable institutions proved wholly 
inadequate to grapple with this invasion of hun- 
ger, and the burial-grounds themselves in some 
places were unable to find space for the cofiEins of 
the newly dead. In some parts of the south and 
west of Ireland, the cofhns had to do double and 
treble duty. A coffin was made with one of its 
sides so adjusted as to be capable of easy removal. 
The dead body thus coffined was lowered into 
the grave, the coffin was then lifted up so that the 
corpse fell from its wooden shroud into the cold, 
soft bosom of Mother Earth, and the coffin was 
removed altogether and made to do duty for suc- 
cessive inanimate occupants. 

The weather during that winter proved remark- 
ably cold for Ireland, and in many parts of the 
south and west of the island the snow lay deep 
on the ground for days and days together. Some 
of the villages presented, under these conditions, 
the most ghastly sights that human imagination 
can picture. The unhappy creatures, men, women, 
and children, who were already sinking from hun- 
ger, had their dying agonies increased by the in- 
tensity of the cold, and by the drifts of snow which 
made their way into every miserable hovel when- 
ever the door was open, or even through the chinks 
and fissures of the rotten and broken old doors 
when no wider opening was made for the admis- 

64 



YOUNG IRELAND 

sion of the snowy gusts. It must be owned that 
this was a trying time for a boy of sixteen to begin 
his work of descriptive reporting. I grew terribly 
familiar, in those days, with the frequent sight of 
death in some of its most heart-rending shapes. 
Again and again have I seen the corpse of some 
man, woman, or child, the victim of hunger and 
cold, with a face of greenish pallor, lying across 
the threshold of a cabin or on the pathway of some 
village street. The workhouses were crowded out 
of all proportion to their capacity for the recep- 
tion of inmates, and the utmost efforts of active 
beneficence proved utterly unable to make head 
against the ever increasing spread of the famine. 

It is only right to say that nothing was wanting 
which public and private beneficence could do to 
check the ravages of that terrible season. I can 
well remember the mingled sensations created by 
the sounding of joy bells from many steeples in 
the city of Cork, when the news went abroad that 
an American war frigate had come into the har- 
bour heavily laden with food supplies wherewithal 
to resist the work of the famine. The mere thought 
that public rejoicing should have come to be asso- 
ciated with the arrival from across the Atlantic of 
donations of food for the starving poor whom the 
local authorities were not able to save from star- 
vation, was of itself enough to fill the heart with a 
new and a keener sense of the misery surrounding 
us on all sides. Other countries followed the gen- 

65 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

erous example of America. As a writer in one of 
the national newspapers said at the time, " Even 
the heart of the Turk at the far Dardanelles was 
touched, and he sent us in pity the alms of a 
beggar." 

Owing to an extraordinary idea of political 
economy prevailing at the time among the gov- 
erning authorities in Ireland, great supplies of 
wheat and flour were kept stored in some pub- 
lic buildings used as temporary granaries, lest if 
the whole supplies were poured out too lavishly, 
the result might be an undue interference with the 
possible profits of the private trader. In more than 
one instance it happened — it may have happened 
in many instances for aught I know, but I am only 
speaking of those which came within the range of 
my observation — that the food thus stored was 
badly packed, so that it actually rotted and had to 
be poured into the sea, while numbers were starv- 
ing on the near shores who might have been kept 
alive if the grain and flour had been devoted in 
good time to their relief. To quote again from' one 
of the national newspapers, it may truly be said 
that all through the south and west of Ireland 
there seemed to be " but one silent, vast dissolu- 
tion." The people of the island underwent during 
these terrible months a sudden and immense re- 
duction, from which it has never since recovered. 
With the famine, and after it, there set in that 
flood of emigration to the United States and Can- 

66 



YOUNG IRELAND 

ada, but more especially to the United States, 
which has gone on increasing in volume from that 
time to our own days. 

One very natural result of the famine and its 
attendant horrors was to arouse among the Irish 
generally a feeling of intense hostility to British 
rule. It could not but become known all over the 
country that while English political and econo- 
mical parties were contending against each other 
about theories and doctrines of political economy, 
an immense number of Irish men, women, and 
children were starving to death in their own mis- 
erable homes. The Free Traders, under the lead- 
ership of Cobden and Bright, and more lately of 
Sir Robert Peel, were doing their very best to have 
the ports opened to the admission of food supplies 
from all nations free of duty, but these efforts were 
resisted by the opponents of free trade, and in the 
mean time the people perished. Bright himself 
many years after, when describing the history of 
that period and eulogizing the noble efforts of 
his friend Cobden, declared that "famine itself, 
against which we had warred, joined us." The 
famine in Ireland actually enabled the Free Trad- 
ers to carry their wise and generous policy to suc- 
cess; but in the mean time the famine was doing 
its own deadly work, and the Irish population only 
saw that they and theirs were the forlorn hope 
which had to be consigned to sacrifice during the 
struggle. 

67 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

When the famine had done its worst, and there 
was time to think about something else than 
deaths from starvation, it soon became evident 
that among the majority of the Irish people the 
peaceful and constitutional policy of Daniel O'Con- 
nell had sunk into utter discredit. The famine in 
Ireland was the immediate cause of the triumphs 
secured by the advocates of free trade, but it was 
the immediate cause also of the Irish rebellion in 
1848. The younger race of Irish nationalists had 
already broken away from O'Connell's leadership 
when he endeavoured to pledge them to a strictly 
peaceful and constitutional policy, and the mood 
of mind produced throughout the country by the 
ravages of the famine was naturally favourable to 
any incitement against the system of rule which 
was believed to be the main cause of the whole 
calamity. The Young Ireland party, the followers 
that is to say of the new group of national leaders, 
came into something like genuine power, and it 
would not have required a very far-seeing judg- 
ment to fill an observer just then with the convic- 
tion that an attempt at armed rebellion would be 
the next event in the national history. 

I am not telling the story of that time except 
in so far as it bears upon my account of my own 
life and doings. In 1848 most of the young men 
whom I then knew and who were my daily asso- 
ciates had become members of the Young Ireland 
party. The great majority, indeed, of the younger 

68 



YOUNG IRELAND 

men all through the south and west and midlands 
of Ireland were in thorough sympathy with the 
purposes and the principles of that party, and the 
only difference of opinion among us was as to the 
possibility of success for any attempt at a national 
revolution. Knowing the strength of the British 
power, a large number of us still doubted the suc- 
cess of any such attempt ; but the year was one of 
political convulsion all over Europe, and even the 
doubters among us could not but hope that some- 
thing effective might be done by the help of for- 
eign intervention. The armed movement, however, 
was precipitated by the sudden action of Smith 
O'Brien, the recognized leader of the party, against 
the wiser counsels of men like Charles Gavan 
Duffy and John Blake Dillon, and precipitated 
also by the attempts of the government to disarm 
the whole country and reduce its manhood to help- 
lessness. Thus was brought about the untimely 
and unprepared outbreak of rebellion which ended 
in the collapse at Ballingarry. 

My first important work as a shorthand reporter 
was begun at the opening of the Special Commis- 
sion held at Clonmel for the trial of Smith O'Brien, 
Thomas Francis Meagher, and two of their asso- 
ciates in the Ballingarry conflict. Smith O'Brien 
was a man of rank, descended from an Irish kingly 
house ; and the head of his family was the Mar- 
quess of Thomond. 

Meagher belonged to what is conventionally 
69 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

described as the upper middle class, had received 
a high education, and might well have looked 
forward to a life of ease and luxury. He was the 
most brilliant speaker among the many brilliant 
speakers whom the Young Ireland movement was 
bringing into prominence. I had met him more 
than once in Cork before the outbreak of the rebel- 
lion, and on one occasion I was suddenly called 
upon to do a severe piece of professional work in 
consequence of a visit which he paid to the city. 
One evening, after the work of the day had been, 
as I supposed, quite finished, I was quietly reading 
at home when I was surprised by a visit from John 
Francis Maguire and Thomas Francis Meagher. 
Maguire told me hurriedly that Meagher was only 
passing through the city and had not intended to 
deliver any public address there ; but that a great 
number of his local friends and admirers had got 
around him, and insisted that a public meeting 
must be hastily summoned, and that he must de- 
liver a speech. The meeting had been summoned, 
and was to begin within half an hour of the time 
when my visitors came to my door ; and their im- 
mediate purpose was to tell me that Maguire could 
find none other of his reporters near at hand, and 
that I must come and take a note of the whole 
speech, and write it out in time for publication in 
the next day's issue of the paper. Maguire 's paper, 
the " Cork Examiner," was then published on 
three days of the week, — it had not yet become a 

70 



YOUNG IRELAND 

daily paper, — and Meagher's meeting was to be 
held and Meagher's speech was to be delivered 
on the evening before the day of publication. 
This was a fact of considerable importance to me, 
for it meant that I should probably have to sit up 
the whole night in writing out the report of the 
speech. I felt somewhat alarmed at the responsi- 
bility thus suddenly put upon me, but I felt also 
a certain personal pride in the important chance 
it offered to me, and that emotion was still further 
stimulated by the assurance which Maguire gave 
me in his kindly way that I had now obtained my 
first great opportunity of proving myself a quali- 
fied shorthand reporter. 

Meagher's speech was very long and very bril- 
liant, containing some passages of glowing and 
half-poetic eloquence which linger in my memory 
yet. I was all the more deeply interested in the 
speech as I heard it because I had always been 
given to understand that Meagher's speeches were 
works of elaborate preparation, and that he would 
never commit himself to the risk of attempting 
an extemporaneous address. In this particular 
instance I had the best reason for knowing that 
Meagher had no intention of delivering any public 
oration when he entered Cork, and that he had had 
no time since the task had been forced upon him 
to make any preparation whatever. Yet the speech 
impressed me as the very finest I had yet heard 
him deliver, and superior in many qualities to some 

71 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

of his speeches which seemed to bear the evidence 
of careful preparation. I had heard Smith O'Brien 
speak more than once; but he had absolutely no 
gift of eloquence, and the influence he exerted 
over his countrymen was due to his ancestral and 
historical claims on Irish sympathy, to his absolute 
sincerity and unselfish patriotism, and perhaps in 
some degree also to his commanding presence. I 
may conclude my account of this incident in my 
career as a reporter by saying that I spent the 
whole of that night and the following morning in 
writing out Meagher's speech, and that I consid- 
ered myself amply rewarded for my toil when I 
heard from both Maguire and Meagher that no 
fault was to be found with my rendering of it. 

The State trials at Clonmel made an event for 
me of great personal as well as political and na- 
tional interest. I was one of the three reporters 
who were sent from the " Cork Examiner " to take 
notes of the proceedings, and I felt no little pride 
in the thought that I was thus admitted to a recog- 
nized and important position on the newspaper 
press. It was not always the very easiest or most 
agreeable work even apart from the mechanical 
labour of taking one's turn in the making of notes 
and converting the shorthand into newspaper 
" copy," which usually occupied a good deal of 
time after the rising of the court. It often hap- 
pened that on the day before the publication of 
the " Cork Examiner " the proceedings were so 

72 



YOUNG IRELAND 

important as to require the appearance of the re- 
port in the following day's paper, which was given 
to the public at a late hour in the afternoon. 

These were days, at least in the south of Ire- 
land, before railway travelling had yet come into 
practice. There were lines of railway, indeed, 
running from Dublin to various parts of the coun- 
try, but none of them had yet been extended so 
far south as to connect Clonmel with Cork city. 
When we, the three reporters from the " Exam- 
iner," were travelling to Clonmel on our first jour- 
ney, we went by the ordinary stage-coach, still made 
familiar to modern readers through the pages of 
Dickens's earlier novels. On fine days such a 
mode of travel had its pleasant hours ; although 
too many hours of it were apt to beget a weari- 
some sensation, no matter what might be the 
charms of the surrounding scenery. The distance 
between Cork and Clonmel looks but small on a 
map of Ireland ; but I can tell my younger readers 
that if they had to make the journey on the top 
of an old-fashioned stage-coach, they would be very 
likely to regard it as inordinately long and tire- 
some. But it was not a stage-coach journey which 
caused the trouble we reporters at the Clonmel 
State trials felt most trying and exhausting. The 
"Examiner," let us say, was to appear on the 
Wednesday evening, — we did not then have much 
to do with morning newspapers in the south of 
Ireland, — and some important evidence had been 

71 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

given on Tuesday which it was absolutely neces- 
sary that the readers of the paper should have in 
its next issue. The court, perhaps, had continued 
its sitting until some hour long after the departure 
of the evening stage-coach. In those days it is 
hardly necessary to say that we had no electric 
telegraphs at work, and the only way of communi- 
cating between Clonmel and Cork was by horse, 
or horse and vehicle of some sort. There was 
nothing, therefore, for it but that two of us report- 
ers should charter in Clonmel an Irish jaunting- 
car, drive through the greater part of the night 
and morning to Cork, and, when we got there, sit 
down without thought of rest in the newspaper 
rooms, go on with the writing out of our " copy " 
until it was finished, and then start off again as 
quickly as possible on our return journey to Clon- 
mel. I had to take part in several of these enter- 
prises, and I do not think that any of my later 
experiences of work or travel have left in my mind 
so intense an impression of hurry, discomfort, and 
fatigue. Even the buoyant spirits of youth, about 
which we writers have always so much to say, did 
not quite enable us young men engaged in that 
kind of work to bear up without grumbling against 
the toil which necessity had thus imposed upon 
us, or to think only of the national movement 
while we were grumbling and groaning over the 
slow and jolting movement of our horse and car. 
I must say, however, that the sympathies of my 
74 



YOUNG IRELAND 

newspaper colleagues and myself were thoroughly 
with that national movement, and that we should 
have felt proud indeed if it had been our good for- 
tune to take any part in it. The trials were deeply 
interesting, and the prisoners were defended by 
some of the leading men at the Irish bar, among 
whom the most conspicuous were James Whiteside, 
who afterwards sat for a long time in the House 
of Commons, became law officer in more than 
one Conservative administration, and finally Lord 
Chief Justice of the Irish Court of Queen's Bench, 
and Isaac Butt, who was famous in later years 
as the leader of the first organised Home Rule 
movement. Whiteside and Butt were both men 
of remarkable eloquence, although in very differ- 
ent styles. Whiteside was the more polished and 
scholarly and ornate of the two ; Butt was the more 
animated, original, and impressive. It was during 
these trials in Clonmel that I first came into any 
personal acquaintanceship with William Howard 
Russell, now Sir William Howard Russell, the fa- 
mous and brilliant war correspondent of " The 
Times," — the last, I may say, of the great war cor- 
respondents who worked and wrote before the tele- 
graph wires had yet allowed them to send their 
descriptions of battle flying on the wings of elec- 
tricity from the very field of war. Russell was then 
one of the reporters whom " The Times " sent to 
record for it the proceedings of the Clonmel trials, 
and I remember that even then, although he was 

75 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

yet wholly unknown to fame, I regarded him with 
infinite respect as a countryman of my own who 
had made his way to an important position in 
London journalism. 

I remember one side incident, happening during 
the course of the trial, which had and has a deep 
interest for me. I observed that, while the prisoners 
stood in the dock, some of their sympathisers and 
admirers in the court around used to pass along 
to them through the hands of the ofificials small 
volumes, more especially to Smith O'Brien and 
Meagher, which were returned after a few mo- 
ments of delay. My curiosity was naturally excited 
by these doings ; and I soon found that the vol- 
umes were sent to O'Brien or Meagher by some 
admirer who prayed for an autograph, and the court 
ofificials were reasonable enough not to put any 
difificulty in the way of these harmless requests. 
Inspired by the idea, I sent in to the dock to 
Meagher a volume of Moore's poems I happened 
to have with me, and an accompanying written line 
signed by me asking for his autograph. At this 
very time the court was listening to the evidence 
of a government informer — Dobbin I think was 
his name, but he was certainly not of kin with 
Thackeray's Dobbin — who had been employed 
by the police to profess himself a devoted Young 
Irelander, and thus obtain admission to the coun- 
cils of some of the party, and to make reports 
accordingly. When my volume came back from 

^6 



YOUNG IRELAND 

Meagher's kindly and obliging hand, I found that 
he had written in it these lines from one of Moore's 
own poems : — 

" Oh ! for a tongue to curse the slave 
Whose treason Hke a deadly blight 
Comes o'er the councils of the brave 

And blasts them in their hour of might." 

I need not pursue in any detail the course of 
the trials. I heard the prisoners sentenced to death 
with all the accompanying horrors which then 
made part of a capital sentence in cases of high 
treason. The capital sentence was not carried out ; 
Queen Victoria commuted it to transportation for 
life, which was itself long afterwards revoked by 
an amnesty. Smith O'Brien returned to his own 
country after many years, and died in Wales. 
Meagher escaped from Australia and went to the 
United States, took service on the side of the 
North during the Civil War, and led his Irish le- 
gion gallantly into battle on more than one hard- 
fought field. After peace had completely been 
restored, he lost his brave life by an accidental fall 
from the deck of a steamer one stormy night on the 
Missouri River. I never saw either Smith O'Brien 
or Meagher after the close of the State trials in 
Clonmel. 

The failure of the attempted rebellion of 1848 
did not extinguish the passionate national senti- 
ment which was deep in the hearts of a large num- 
ber of the Irish people. This feeling, as was but 

17 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

natural, burned with warmest glow in the breasts 
of the younger men. Most of the young men with 
whom I habitually associated in Cork were bit- 
terly disappointed with the failure of the Tipper- 
ary attempt ; and not merely with its failure, but 
with the absence of all thrill and lustre that might 
in some degree, as it seemed to them, have re- 
deemed even the memory of failure. There was a 
strong impression among these young men, and 
among elder men as well, that the sudden, unex- 
pected, and entirely unprepared movement under 
Smith O'Brien had not done any justice or given 
any chance to the genuine desire of the Irish peo- 
ple for an effort towards the accomplishment of 
their independence. The actual truth was that, 
outside a very small circle of Smith O'Brien's per- 
sonal friends and associates, there was no know- 
ledge that an immediate attempt at an armed ris- 
ing was in contemplation. It is a curious fact, also, 
that John Blake Dillon, one of those who strongly 
opposed the premature movement, was the only 
Young Irelander of great influence and well- 
known name who was found by Smith O'Brien's 
side in the Ballingarry conflict. Dillon had done 
his best to dissuade his leader from this rash at- 
tempt ; but as the leader would not be dissuaded, 
Dillon was none the less resolved to stand by 
Smith O'Brien's side to the last. Many or most of 
the other prominent Young Irelanders did not 
even know that there was any intention of open- 

7^ 



YOUNG IRELAND 

ing the rebellion just then and there. For all these 
and many other reasons, the Young Irelanders 
with whom I was associated refused to admit that 
Ballingarry had been any test whatever of Ireland's 
courage and resolve. They were also strongly im- 
pressed with the conviction that it would be for the 
good of the Irish cause if some attempt were made 
which would prove, at least, that a large number of 
Irishmen were ready to die in the field on behalf 
of Ireland's national claims. They were grieved 
by the thought that the public opinion of England 
might regard the whole Young Ireland movement 
as a poetic dream, the inspiration of poets and 
romancists, and bearing with it no deep deter- 
mined resolution to make personal sacrifice for 
the Irish cause. It was their conviction that, after 
the Ballingarry failure, there could be no hope of 
impressing on the mind of England the intense 
earnestness of Ireland's national feeling, unless it 
were proved that a large number of Irishmen were 
willing to sacrifice themselves without any expec- 
tation of winning even a momentary success, but 
solely with the object of showing to the whole 
world their absolute devotion to the honour and 
the rights of their country. 

The result of this feeling was the determination 
to make another attempt which, if it did nothing 
else, should convince mankind that the cause was 
a burning and an inextinguishable reality. A se- 
cret movement was organized for this purpose. 

79 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

The plan was that a simultaneous rising should 
take place throughout the greater part of the 
country; that in each locality an attack should be 
made on the same day and hour on the barracks 
of the soldiery and police. Thus a struggle should 
begin which would have the effect of showing that 
Ireland had her myriads of willing and self-devoted 
martyrs to the duty of making known her wrongs, 
and that Irishmen were ready to lay down their 
lives in protest against them. All this would pro- 
bably seem to cool and unconcerned observers at 
the present time a romantic and even quixotic 
idea. But it was an idea which, as I well know, 
took a firm hold of thousands of young Irishmen 
in all parts of Ireland, and might under more fa- 
vourable conditions have ended in a demonstration 
well calculated to send a thrill throughout all civili- 
zation. Many of the leaders of this organization 
were personal friends and associates of my own. 
One of these was the late Joseph Brenan, a rising 
young literary man and poet of those days, a friend 
of James Clarence Mangan, the famous author of 
" Dark Rosaleen." Brenan was then one of the 
principal writers for a national newspaper in Dub- 
lin. He was a Cork man by birth, the brother of a 
distinguished Catholic clergyman, and had lived 
all his earlier years in Cork city. He was one of 
the most gifted young men I have ever known. He 
had a rare and thrilling command of eloquent 
speech, and he was regarded by all of us who 

80 



YOUNG IRELAND 

knew him, and, indeed, by his fellow citizens in 
general, as destined to a distinguished literary, 
political, and patriotic career. Brenan took a lead- 
ing part in this secret organization, and as a matter 
of fact it was under his personal guidance that 
the only serious trouble happened at the time 
appointed for the simultaneous movement. 

But the whole effort proved a failure, as all 
secret organizations were destined to prove under 
the existing conditions in Ireland. The paid in- 
former was set to work everywhere, for men willing 
to do such work were to be found in every com- 
munity, and could not be detected at the outset 
by any scrutiny on the part of the Nationalists. 
These men professed to be enthusiastic members 
of the brotherhood, and kept the authorities at 
Dublin Castle thoroughly well informed as to the 
whole purposes and plans of the organization. 
The result was that the government had ample 
time to make their arrangements in advance, to 
take measures at the last moment for the seizure 
of arms here, there, and everywhere, and for the 
arrest and imprisonment of the men who were 
known to be the leaders of the projected rising. 
The rising came to nothing, and did not even 
have the effect which some of us would have re- 
garded as its full title to national gratitude and its 
service to the Irish cause — the effect of proving 
that there were thousands of Irishmen ready to lay 
down their lives in protest against the oppression 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

and the degradation of their country. After the col- 
lapse of the whole movement, Brenan succeeded 
in making his escape to America, where he won 
for himself much literary and political distinc- 
tion ; and he died many years after, leaving a name 
still remembered with affection and gratitude by 
all Irish Nationalists in the United States. That 
attempt at insurrection saw my only active per- 
sonal share in the traditional work of Irish rebel- 
lion against English rule. From that time forth I 
became more and more convinced that the task 
of righting Ireland's wrongs was to be accom- 
plished by earnest and incessant appeal to the 
conscience, the reason, and the manly feeling of 
England's best citizens, and by the determination 
to regard the legislative independence of Ireland 
as the satisfaction for Ireland's wrongs and the 
avenue to the peace, contentment, and prosperity 
of Ireland. The name of Home Rule had not yet 
come into use ; but from that time I became, what 
I have ever since continued to be, a convinced 
and devoted Home Ruler. 

I cannot close this chapter without saying a 
few words about the man who was the first inspir- 
ing force of the movement in favour of an armed 
rebellion. That man was John Mitchel. Mitchel 
was the son of a Presbyterian minister, and was 
born in the county of Derry, then a stronghold 
of the Orange and anti-National party. He was a 
lawyer by profession, but soon gave himself up alto- 

82 



YOUNG IRELAND 

gether to literature, and especially to writing for 
newspapers. He was at one time assistant editor 
of " The Nation ; " and afterwards started a news- 
paper of his own, called " The United Irishman," 
in which he boldly and persistently maintained that 
Ireland could only achieve her national rights by 
an armed rebellion. He was one of the most bril- 
liant prose writers Ireland has ever brought forth ; 
and would, I think, have won a name for himself 
in literature alone, if he had not given up his genius 
and his heart to the political cause of his country. 
His newspaper soon became a power in Ireland, 
and the authorities of Dublin Castle began to find 
that they must remove him from their path or else 
encounter an insurrection. At their instigation an 
act was hastily passed through Parliament creat- 
ing a new offence called treason-felony, that is to 
say, making the mere utterance of sedition, even 
where no overt act of sedition had been committed, 
a treasonable offence and liable to the punishment 
of transportation. Under this act, which was spe- 
cially passed on his account, Mitchel was arraigned, 
found guilty, and sentenced to fourteen years' trans- 
portation. I had met him only once before his 
trial, and that was in the offices of the " Cork Ex- 
aminer." I saw in Cork harbour the vessel which 
was carrying him out to Van Diemen's Land, the 
destined place of his exile. Some seven years after 
he escaped to the United States ; and after a long 
interval of time I had several opportunities of 

83 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

meeting and talking with him in New York. He 
was an absolutely sincere and most highly gifted 
man, devoted with a generous fanaticism to every 
cause he took up ; and under happier conditions 
he might well have become a benefactor to his 
country and an ornament to literature. 



84 



CHAPTER VI 

THE ROAD OF IMAGINATION 

In this small seaside place on the Kentish coast 
of England where I have lately passed some se- 
cluded years, I can see from one of my windows 
a road which gently winds along a rising ground, 
having the blue waves at its side, and then, reach- 
ing the highest level of the land, is lost in the hori- 
zon. This road seems to me an emblem of that 
ideal road we may be all said to look upon in our 
moments of fanciful musing. It is the road lead- 
ing to the land of imagination and of poetry, to 
the ideal country of our vague aspirations, to the 
capital city of a realm of romance for which we 
have all yearned at one time or another. During 
that early period of my life the road of imagina- 
tion was always leading my fancy to London. I 
am not ever likely to forget my first sight of 
Rome, of Athens, of Constantinople, of Cairo, of 
Jerusalem, and I can easily recall to mind my 
early longings for a first sight of these immortal 
cities. But at the time about which I am now 
writing, my yearnings were especially for a first 
sight of London. 

That desire was not inspired merely by the 

85 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

literature of prose and poetry which made Lon- 
don to me the central point of the universe. 
There was an element of the prosaic and the 
practical stimulating my wish for the first look at 
London. I had got into my mind that London 
was the only place where a young man with a love 
for literary work, who had already become asso- 
ciated with journalism, could hope to make a good 
living by the exercise of his intelligence and his 
pen. The conditions of my family were making it 
more and more necessary that I should strive for 
an engagement in the English capital. My sister 
had been for a long time in sinking health ; and 
while she lived I could not think of leaving her 
for the sake of any hope of advancement, and I 
could not subject her to the risk and trouble of 
an enterprise for a new and a distant place of set- 
tlement. But my sister died at the age of twenty, 
and my brother had already made up his mind to 
seek his fortune at the first opportunity in the 
United States ; and there was, thus, no serious 
difficulty in the way of my making an attempt to 
secure an engagement in London. I resolved to 
get together a few pounds, and to go over to Lon- 
don for the purpose of trying to obtain a place on 
some newspaper there. The only friend I had in 
London was a fellow countryman who had been 
a colleague of mine for some time on the " Cork 
Examiner," and who had more lately obtained a 
seat in the Press gallery of the House of Com- 

86 



THE ROAD OF IMAGINATION 

mons as a reporter for one of the London daily 
newspapers. I knew that he would help me if he 
possibly could; and it was something, at all events, 
to have a friend in London who could at least 
put me in the right way of getting an engagement. 
So I made my arrangements, and, in the early part 
of 1852, I accomplished my first expedition to the 
London of my dreams. 

I went by steamer from Cork to Liverpool, and 
spent two or three days there at the house of a 
friend and his sister who were then settled in the 
city of the Mersey; and I may say in advance 
that this visit proved a great event in my life, for 
the sister of my friend afterwards became my 
dearly loved and now long-lamented wife. I left 
Liverpool for London early one morning, travel- 
ling by what was then called a parliamentary train, 
that is, a train wholly composed of carriages for 
which only the lowest recognized rate of fares 
was charged, and which had to stop at all man- 
ner of stations and get itself " shunted " in order 
to allow the trains with first and second class car- 
riages to pass it on the way. I did not arrive at 
London until late evening was already darkening 
into night, and I got my first sight of the great 
city as we rumbled slowly along on the top of an 
omnibus from Euston Square to the regions of the 
Bank and the Mansion House. It was not, cer- 
tainly, a very fascinating sight; but still it was 
a sight of London. I had already been studying 

87 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

London for years, and the name of every street 
through which or across which we passed brought 
to my mind some memories of what I had read 
in plays and poems and novels. It seemed to me, 
not that I was coming into an entirely strange and 
unknown city, but that I was revisiting streets 
with whose history and associations I was already 
quite familiar. Perhaps for that very reason the 
darkness of the hour was only all the better fitted 
for the realization of my dreams about London. 
The gaslights in the streets — I need hardly say 
we had no electric lighting then — did not illu- 
minate strongly enough to reveal all the prosaic 
characteristics of the streets and the houses, and 
only lent a new touch of the poetic to the regions 
I was then looking on for the first time. " Dark- 
ness," says a poet, " shows us realms of light we 
never saw by day." The poet was writing only 
of the stars; but the darkness of that London 
showed me not merely the realms of gaslight not 
to be seen by day, but, with that gaslight's help, 
some realms of the London of my imagination 
which might not have been seen so clearly by me 
if I had looked upon them for the first time under 
the pitiless revelations of the noonday sun. 

I may dispose briefly of the practical results 
which came of my expedition to London. These 
practical results amounted for the time to little 
or nothing, but they were not without some later 
influence on the purposes of my visit. My friend 

88 



THE ROAD OF IMAGINATION 

whom I have already mentioned introduced me 
to the managers of the reporting staffs of two or 
three daily newspapers, and got my name put down 
as a candidate for a place at some vague future 
opportunity. Just now, however, I am more in- 
clined to say something about my first impressions 
of London than to deal much with the personal 
incidents of my own early struggles. I spent a fort- 
night in London, and all the time that I had to 
spare from my quest after an engagement was de- 
voted to the delightful task of seeing everything I 
could see of London sights and London's famous 
places. I had come too late to see that great ex- 
hibition in the Crystal Palace, the first of all those 
many and memorable exhibitions of industrial pro- 
ducts which have been organized since then in 
so many great cities of the world from London 
and Paris to St. Louis. The Crystal Palace exhibi- 
tion was opened and closed in 185 1, but I had at 
least the satisfaction of seeing the Palace itself 
in Hyde Park on its old site before there was any 
thought of its removal to its present situation. So 
far as its older streets and quarters were concerned, 
London was then in outer aspects very much the 
same as it is at the present day. Only in the meth- 
ods of street traffic was there much difference in 
those older regions between the London of 1852 
and the London of our own time. There were no 
tramways then, and there were no underground 
railways or "tubes"; but we saw, just as now, the 

89 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

old-fashioned four-wheeler and the hansom cab, 
while the sort of vehicle described in Dickens's 
earlier novels, the vehicle in which the driver 
occupied a seat planted close to the side of that 
assigned to the "fare," had already wholly dis- 
appeared from the streets of London. There 
was no Thames Embankment at that time, or for 
many years after, and the banks of the Thames 
within the metropolis itself were lined by dingy 
wharfs, rows of old-fashioned warehouses, and tum- 
ble-down shops, shanties, and places for the sale 
of drink. From Westminster Bridge to London 
Bridge the banks of the river were made about 
as unlovely and unpicturesque as could well be 
accomplished even by the perverted ingenuity of 
man. There were some peculiarities of the Lon- 
don streets even still which recalled the old times 
and habits described in many of the books I 
loved. The swinging signboards, the tablets illu- 
mined by the great names that make part of the 
history of certain houses, the narrow lanes which 
turned sharply and abruptly out of broad thor- 
oughfares and seemed to bring back the living 
presence of mediaeval town life, these and other 
such evidences of London's historic antiquity were 
studied by me with an ever freshening delight. 

But there were some other peculiarities in cer- 
tain of the smaller streets running out of or behind 
the Strand which impressed my stranger mind in 
a very different and less favourable manner. A 

90 



THE ROAD OF IMAGINATION 

reader whose recollections of London do not go 
back farther than the last twenty years might find 
it hard to believe that a civilized community could 
behold such sights as we might all have seen in 
London at the time when the great exhibition 
was held in Hyde Park, and for long after. Cer- 
tain small streets here and there seemed to have 
acquired the privilege of outraging public decency 
in the grossest fashion, without any interference 
whatever on the part of the constituted authori- 
ties. I shall not ask too much attention from my 
readers to this repulsive subject ; but I think it 
is well, as a mere matter of historical narrative, to 
say something of the sights to be seen every day, 
which I myself saw at that time in the immediate 
neighbourhood of the Strand, of its thronging 
crowds, its numerous police, and its great churches. 
To many Londoners of these days it is quite pos- 
sible that the names of Holywell Street and Wych 
Street may suggest no particularly repulsive idea. 
But at the time of which I am writing these two 
streets bordering the very centre of the Strand 
were such as the lowest slums of London or New 
York in the present time could not equal for abom- 
ination. Most of the houses in these streets were 
shops for the sale of indecent books and pictures. 
The pictures and books — more especially the pic- 
tures — were flauntingly displayed in the windows 
of each shop, and were gross beyond all possible 
description. Then a great many of the small 

91 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

houses in these streets were occupied by women 
of the professionally immoral class ; and it was the 
habit of these young women to stand at their doors 
in the open day, and to invite the attention of pass- 
ing men, each woman wearing no costume what- 
ever but her chemise and her slippers. The police 
authorities do not seem to have given themselves 
the slightest concern about these exhibitions. 
There were many other places in the metropolis 
— such, for instance, as the road running south 
from Waterloo Bridge — where almost as open a 
display was made through the brightest hours of 
the day, but none that I saw were quite as bad as 
Holywell Street and Wych Street. There is some 
satisfaction in the knowledge that no such places 
are to be seen in the open day of London now, 
and that Holywell Street and Wych Street have 
ceased to exist. I do not venture to say that the 
morals of the metropolis have improved to any 
corresponding degree, and I am afraid that the 
scenes still presented at night in the Piccadilly re- 
gions are not such as could give any satisfaction 
to the contemplative and healthy-minded observer. 
But it is worth noticing that the sights which were 
to be seen in certain streets and alleys all day long 
when I first visited London belong now altogether 
to the history of the past. 

During that first visit of mine to London, the 
figure of the Duke of Wellington, the victor of 
Waterloo, was still often to be seen in the West 

92 



THE ROAD OF IMAGINATION 

Eiid streets. I saw him several times in Piccadilly 
and St. James Street as he was driving in the 
curious cabriolet he had devised for his own espe- 
cial use and comfort, and I passed him also in the 
same region as he was going along, a quiet pedes- 
trian, at whom every one stopped to gaze. I saw 
him once in the House of Lords on the occasion 
of my first visit to the Strangers' gallery of that 
august assembly, and I heard him deliver a speech 
that lives in my memory more fixedly than it might 
have done even if it had been an oration worthy 
of Lord Chatham or the eloquent Lord Derby, the 
Rupert of debate. When I came into the gallery, 
a discussion was going on concerning some new 
measure which had been introduced to the House 
that evening, and on which the Duke of Welling- 
ton appeared to have already offered some obser- 
vations. When I came into the House, a noble and 
learned Lord was replying to the criticisms of the 
Duke. In the course of his speech he said that 
he was afraid " the illustrious Duke " did not quite 
understand the full bearing of the Bill then before 
the House. Thereupon " the illustrious Duke " 
suddenly interrupted the noble and learned Lord 
by rising from his seat, coming to the table, strik- 
ing that piece of furniture very heavily with his 
clenched hand, and exclaiming some such words 
as these : " My Lords, the noble and learned Lord 
has said that I do not seem to understand this Bill. 
Well, my Lords, I can only say that I read the Bill 

93 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

carefully through once, twice, and three times, and 
if, after that, I do not understand the Bill, why, 
then, my Lords, I must be a damned stupid fellow." 
Then the Duke of Wellington resumed his seat ; 
and that was the only speech I ever heard him 
deliver. On one of the occasions when I met 
him in the street, he happened to pass a small 
group of workmen who had been doing something 
to the pavement. One of the workmen turned 
round as he passed, recognized the Duke, and 
called out to his fellows, " Mates, there goes grand 
old Nosey " — a familiar allusion to the illustrious 
Duke's most distinguishing feature. 

Of course I paid some visits to the House of 
Commons during my first stay in London, and 
the place had then and always a strong fascina- 
tion for me. But during this experience of mine I 
had not the chance of hearing many of the great 
speakers. Indeed, the first orator I heard in the 
House was one of the members for that city of 
Cork from which I had just come, a man of con- 
siderable ability, but who, unfortunately for me, 
was in the habit of making very long speeches 
among his own constituents. I had reported many 
of these speeches, was very familiar with their style 
and length, and I am afraid had come to regard 
them as rather tedious exercises. The reader, there- 
fore, may imagine what my feelings were when, as 
I entered the Strangers' gallery of the House for 
the first time, and was settling down into my seat, 

94 



THE ROAD OF IMAGINATION 

I recognized the too familiar voice of the orator 
then in possession, and found that my introduc- 
tion to parliamentary eloquence was listening to 
a speech in the well-known tones of my compa- 
triot. The speech lasted so long that I was not 
able to wait until the end of it ; the benches of 
the House were but very thinly occupied, and I 
had to own to myself as I left Westminster Pal- 
ace that this, my earliest experience of parliamen- 
tary debate, had not quite come up to my fond 
anticipations. The Terrace of the House of Com- 
mons had not then become the brilliant social 
institution it became in later days, and there were 
no groups of fine ladies to be seen along its pave- 
ment. 

I gave up my evenings for the most part to the 
theatres and to the opera houses; I saw with 
genuine delight some performances by Charles 
Mathews, the greatest of English light comedians 
at that time or, as I still think, of any later time, 
Helen Faucit, Phelps, the Keeleys, Buckstone, 
and Benjamin Webster, and I heard in the opera 
houses Grisi, Alboni, Mario, and Lablache. Mac- 
ready had given up the stage not long before my 
visit to London, but I had already seen him more 
than once in the theatre of my native city when 
he was making a starring tour in Ireland. I must 
say that, much as I loved the drama and the opera, 
the greatest attractions for me were found in the 
streets and the parks of London itself, and in the 

95 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

Temple Gardens. I loved to visit every spot which 
had some association with history and poetry and 
novels, with Shakespeare and Dr. Johnson and 
Charles Lamb, with Dickens and Thackeray. 
The result of my visit, on the whole, was to make 
London for me a place of even greater fascination 
than it had been when it was yet only the London 
of my dreams. I became more than ever resolved 
to make it, if I possibly could, my home and the 
place of my work. I remember that once, when I 
was passing the Houses of Parliament, I stopped 
and looked back on the towers of Westminster 
Palace ; and I formed in my own mind the auda- 
cious ambition and hope that I might one day be 
privileged to enter that enclosure as a member of 
the House of Commons. Then I felt inclined to 
laugh at myself for the audacity of my youthful 
aspirations, and consoled myself for my revulsion 
of feeling by the more modest hope that I might 
at least, at some not very distant time, be privi- 
leged to have a seat in the Reporters' gallery. 

My first visit to London was speedily and quite 
unexpectedly followed by another under more 
promising auspices than the first, so far as per- 
sonal ease and comfort were concerned. Some 
measure of great importance to the interests of the 
south of Ireland was to come up for examination 
before a committee of the House of Commons, and 
John Francis Maguire was anxious to have a full 
report of each day's proceedings for the " Cork 

96 



THE ROAD OF IMAGINATION 

Examiner." He selected me for this work, and my 
mind was thereupon filled with two rival delights 
— the delight of having my qualifications as a re- 
porter thus recognized, and the delight of another 
visit to London. Maguire then had lodgings in 
London in a quiet street near to the Haymarket, 
and we had thus a place within easy reach of the 
principal theatres and the Houses of Parliament. 
Maguire was a delightful companion, a man of the 
most kindly and generous nature, and he did all 
that he possibly could to make my stay in London 
this time a genuine holiday. We went to some 
theatre or to the House of Commons every night, 
and we dined at the best restaurants to be found 
in London in the days long before such luxurious 
resorts as the Carlton, the Savoy, and the Cecil had 
come into existence. 

I have a very distinct recollection of an incident 
which occurred one night while we were seated 
in the Haymarket Theatre. The report suddenly 
reached the theatre that Thomas Francis Meaeher, 
the Irish orator and patriot, had succeeded in es- 
caping from the convict settlement in Australia, 
and was supposed to have taken shipping for the 
United States. The news soon spread through the 
stalls and boxes and pit of the theatre, and we heard 
the name repeated on every side. But it was not 
repeated with exactly its proper pronunciation, for 
the name of our distinguished countryman was 
passed along as if it had been spelled " Meeger." 

97 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

I am bound to say that, so far as we could hear, 
there was a tone of sympathy in the spreading 
of the news from the British lips of those who 
were within our range of hearing. " Poor young 
Meeger has escaped from Australia " was the form 
of communication in which, for the most part, we 
heard the news made known ; and so far as we 
could judge, there was only a feeling of satisfac- 
tion in this thoroughly English audience that a 
brilliant young public man had obtained emanci- 
pation from the horrors of a convict settlement. 

It was during this visit to London that I first 
came to see and hear Austen Henry Layard, the 
famous explorer of the ruins of Nineveh, who had 
lately been elected a member of the House of 
Commons. I had many opportunities at later 
times of meeting with Layard, who held office more 
than once under successive governments, who was 
afterwards British ambassador to Madrid and then 
to Constantinople, and became Sir Austen Henry 
Layard. It was during that second visit to London 
that I first had the opportunity of listening to the 
eloquent pleadings of James Hope-Scott, who had 
married Miss Lockhart, daughter of Walter Scott's 
famous biographer. Lockhart himself had married 
Walter Scott's daughter, and it was on their daugh- 
ter's accession to the Abbotsford estate that Hope 
added the name of Scott to his own family name. 
It was his connection with the family of the im- 
mortal novelist that made Hope-Scott an espe- 

98 



THE ROAD OF IMAGINATION 

cially interesting figure in my eyes. Hope-Scott 
and his wife had lately joined the Catholic Church, 
and I could not help thinking it a somewhat re- 
markable stroke of fate which had caused the es- 
tates of Sir Walter, who certainly had never shown 
any sympathy with the religion of the Church of 
Rome, to pass into the hands of two converts to 
the ancient faith. 

Maguire knew London well, and was able to 
show to me many places of interest which I had not 
observed before. When I returned to my native 
city after the second visit to the great metropolis, 
I began to regard myself as quite an authority on 
the aspects and the ways of London. I had made 
it known to Maguire that my great ambition was 
to obtain an engagement on some London news- 
paper; and he, the kindliest and most sympathetic 
of men, who thoroughly understood my family 
conditions and knew well that I had to make a 
hard struggle for life on the narrow field of a 
provincial city, promised to give me every help in 
his power towards the realization of my desire. 
He fulfilled his promise most resolutely and faith- 
fully, and to his influence I was indebted for some 
of the opportunities which helped me towards 
obtaining a wider and more promising field for 
my modest ambition. My life as a journalist was 
soon to have a change of scene. 



99 



CHAPTER VII 

FROM LEE TO MERSEY 

Not long after my return to Cork I made the ac- 
quaintance of Hercules George Robert Robinson, 
who afterwards came to hold high and responsible 
ofiEce as Governor of various British Colonies, suc- 
ceeded Sir John Bowring as Governor of Hong 
Kong, later still became Governor of the Cape of 
Good Hope in succession to Sir Bartle Frere, and 
finally became Lord Rosmead. Hercules Robin- 
son, when I first knew him, was merely Captain 
Robinson, a young man of good family who had 
held a commission in the army, but retired and 
was employed in many civil offices by the authori- 
ties of Dublin Castle. Just before the time when 
I came to know him, he had been appointed Presi- 
dent of a commission of inquiry into the state of 
fairs and markets in Ireland, the business of which 
was to go through all the market towns of the 
country, hear evidence as to their capacity and 
condition, and make a full report to the Govern- 
ment. The commission consisted only of Hercules 
Robinson himself and one assistant commissioner, 
an Irish country gentleman and magistrate, who, 
although a very quiet-going and unambitious per- 

lOO 



FROM LEE TO MERSEY 

sonage, bore the remarkable name of Macbeth. 
There was also a Secretary to the commission, 
the principal duty of this Secretary being to take 
a full shorthand note of all the evidence brought 
before the commission in order that the Govern- 
ment might be presented with a report which after- 
wards could be turned into a Blue Book. The 
commission began its inquiry in Dublin, and then 
journeyed down southwards as far as Cork, stop- 
ping at all the towns and important villages along 
its line of movement, and holding an inquiry as 
to the demands and qualifications of each locality. 
When the commission held its inquiry in Cork, 
it became my work to make a note of each day's 
proceedings for publication in the " Examiner," 
and these reports apparently met with the approval 
of the commissioners. It so happened that for 
some reason or other the Secretary to the com- 
mission was not able to continue his functions 
any longer and had to give up the appointment. 
Thereupon Captain Robinson offered the place 
to me, and Maguire, who thought it would be for 
my advantage to accept the offer, recommended 
me with his usual considerate kindness to under- 
take the duties, promising me that when the work 
of the commission was done, I should find my 
former place on the staff of the " Examiner " still 
open to me if I should feel it necessary to return 
to my old work. The pay offered by the commis- 
sion seemed to me very tempting at that time — 

lOI 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

I was actually to have one guinea a day and my 
travelling expenses. I was much taken also by the 
prospect of making thus a survey of the greater 
part of Ireland, and of having a prolonged stay 
in Dublin for the completion of the report when 
the travelling and the holding of inquiries should 
have come to an end. I therefore gladly accepted 
the offer, and thus for the first and I may safely 
presume for the only time in my life, I came to 
hold an appointment under Government. So I 
joined the commissioners at Dungarvan in the 
county of Waterford, and entered there upon my 
official duties. We visited every town and every 
considerable village in Ireland which the commis- 
sioners had not previously explored, and our duties 
occupied us for several months. 

There would have been under ordinary con- 
ditions a certain monotony in the occupation on 
which I had entered. The commission held an 
inquiry every week day ; in the smaller places the 
inquiry was easily finished in one day, but in the 
towns it often lasted for a longer time, as a large 
number of locally influential personages were anx- 
ious to be allowed an opportunity of expressing 
their views on the subjects under inquiry. When 
the holding of each day's inquiry was done, we 
either travelled on to the place which came next 
on the list, or we spent the evening in the local 
hotel, and I need hardly say that the accommo- 
dation in the villages and in the smaller towns 

I02 



FROM LEE TO MERSEY 

was not always of a very luxurious order. But 
the travelling and the sojourn at the hotels, which 
must have been monotonous and dreary work 
under other conditions, was made positively de- 
lightful by the good spirits, the kindliness, and 
the entertaining powers of the chief commissioner. 
Hercules Robinson was one of the most vari- 
ously accomplished, humorous, and interesting 
men it has ever been my good fortune to know. 
Although he had not up to that time gone through 
any of the strange experiences which came to his 
lot during the long years of his ofiBce as a Colonial 
Governor, he had made the best use of his obser- 
vation and his reading thus far, and he could illu- 
mine the dullest place or subject by his comments 
and his inexhaustible humour. He was a capital 
story-teller, had a keen eye for the comic element 
in everything, and was endowed with a power of 
mimicry which I have often thought would have 
won for him an amazing popularity if fate had 
destined him to be an actor in comedy and not 
a ruler of some of Queen Victoria's far-divided 
Colonial possessions. We always dined together 
when the local authorities did not insist on offer- 
ing their formal hospitality to the commissioners, 
and when our official work for the evening was 
done, we usually sat up to a late hour and Captain 
Robinson read to us some passages from one of 
his favourite authors. He was an admirable reader, 
had a fine voice, and could make every character 

103 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

in the novels from which he read to us seem ahve 
by his power of characteristic expression. I may 
perhaps be allowed to quote from my published 
" Reminiscences " some instances which I de- 
scribed there of Robinson's humorous ways. 

" The commissioners had to receive deputa- 
tions from the municipal authorities in many of 
the towns through which we passed. Each depu- 
tation came in due form, headed by the Mayor or 
some other representative of the local community. 
Captain Robinson received each deputation with 
a bland and deferential grace which was quite 
touching to behold. He listened with an air of 
gravity and attention to all representations which 
the visitors desired to make ; he encouraged and 
even invited further expressions of opinion, and 
drew out some hitherto silent member by appeal- 
ing to him for an exposition of his own personal 
views. When all the deputations desired to say 
had been said, Captain Robinson, in a few sentences 
of eloquent gravity, assured his visitors that the 
commissioners had taken due account of their 
representations, and that the Government should 
be made fully acquainted with the wants and 
wishes of so important a locality, and that the com- 
missioners would not fail to impress upon Her 
Majesty's Ministers the necessity of giving the 
promptest attention to the representations which 
the commissioners intended to present in the form 

104 



FROM LEE TO MERSEY 

of a report. . . . But then, when the doors were 
closed, the chief commissioner at once proceeded 
to favour his colleague and his Secretary with an 
extemporaneous imitation of the voice, the accent, 
the gestures, and the eloquent style of this, that, and 
the other member of the deputation. Never since 
those days have I formed one of a group waiting on 
some great public personage who listened to us 
gravely and attentively and bowed us out courte- 
ously without feeling an uneasy suspicion that the 
moment our backs were turned the great person- 
age went to work to amuse some colleagues with a 
droll imitation of our speeches and our manners. 
I have thus often been led to think of Captain 
Robinson in the Treasury Buildings or Westmin- 
ster Palace or the Offices of the Board of Trade 
while a score of years and thousands of miles lay 
between him and me." 

One other citation I am bound to make in 
order that the reader may fully appreciate the 
more serious side of Robinson's nature and his 
full capacity for the practical work which he had 
to do. 

" But I must do justice to Robinson. When 
the mimicry of the departed deputation was over, 
Robinson always set himself down with earnest- 
ness and patience to examine into the nature of 
every complaint that had been made, every griev- 

los 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

ance that had been described, every mode of rem- 
edy that had been suggested. Even at this time 
I could see that he had the inborn gift of admin- 
istration ; not a word said by any member of any 
deputation was lost upon him, or failed to receive 
the most careful consideration from him, even 
though he did make fun of some of the delegates 
when their backs were turned, for the amusement 
of his travelling companions." 

The greater part of a lifetime had passed away 
when I next met Sir Hercules Robinson, soon 
after to be Lord Rosmead, and soon after that to 
close his brilliant career. 

After the work of the Markets Commission had 
been done, I returned to Cork and took up my po- 
sition once again as a reporter for the " Examiner." 
But my resolve to seek for some wider sphere of 
journalism had only grown stronger than before, 
and when I received an offer of an engagement on 
the staff of a new Liverpool paper, I felt myself 
bound to accept it as a stepping-stone on my way 
to London. The journal from which I received 
this offer was then about to begin its career as 
the first daily paper published in the English pro- 
vinces. It was called the " Northern Daily Times," 
and it began with a gallant flourish of trumpets. 
I was at first engaged merely as a reporter, but 
I soon became its literary critic and its dramatic 
critic. I began to write some of its leading arti- 

io6 



FROM LEE TO MERSEY 

cles, and before it closed its career I was one of 
its editorial staff. It was hard work enough, as may 
easily be understood — all the more so because 
my duties grew every day more varied and less 
distinctly defined. I may say, however, that I felt 
very much at home from the first in my new 
sphere of work, and for the good reason that the 
majority of my colleagues came from my own 
country. Some of the men in the editorial rooms 
were Irish, some of the reporters were Irish, and 
the nationality of the head reporter will not need 
to be further established when I say that his 
name was Patrick Murphy. One of my associates 
on the reporting staff, George Callaghan, had 
actually been a colleague of mine on the " Cork 
Examiner " from the first day when I became at- 
tached to that paper. He had received from the 
" Northern Daily Times " an offer like to that 
which was made to me, and he had accepted it, 
and we had travelled from Cork together. 

The work was somewhat hard for the staff of 
reporters. We had to attend the police courts, 
the county courts, the Town Council meetings, 
and the meetings of the various other public 
boards and institutions in Liverpool, and of course 
we had to be on the lookout for accidents and 
events in the great line of docks and on the Mer- 
sey. Even Sunday was not quite a day of rest, for 
we had always then to visit the local infirmaries 
to ascertain whether any new casualties called 

107 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

for description in Monday's paper. Saturday was 
our nearest approach to a holiday, and some of 
us were very fond of devoting a great part of 
that day to a long ramble into the country. One 
favourite expedition with a few of us was to cross 
the Mersey in one of the river steamers to the 
farthest accessible point on the Cheshire side, and 
from that point to walk for some thirteen delight- 
ful miles of country road into the ancient and 
most picturesque city of Chester. I think it was 
Matthew Arnold who said that Oxford was the 
only place which could be seen after Venice with- 
out a sensation of anticlimax. I should be rather 
inclined to give that position to Chester. I have 
not seen Chester for many years, but it must ever 
be to me like a dream city, or like a material crea- 
tion of poetry and romance. 

My literary work, if I may call it by so fine a 
name, was the part of my duties which I most 
enjoyed. I wrote reviews of books, I was the re- 
cognised dramatic critic for the paper, and I was 
entrusted with the task of describing the local 
exhibitions of the painter's and the sculptor's 
art. Liverpool prided itself much on its artis- 
tic appreciation, and its leading citizens proudly 
insisted that it had ever been the first among 
British cities to recognise and welcome some 
rising figure or new development in the artistic 
world. Liverpool had a local academy of pictures 
which always made a goodly show in the season, 

io8 



FROM LEE TO MERSEY 

and where I can confidently assert some really 
great painters were welcomed before they had 
yet won recognition in London. I found much 
pleasure in doing the work of theatrical critic, 
and the privilege of free admission to drama and 
to opera was something of which to feel proud. 
My ambition began to take more and more a 
distinct literary form, and in my visions of the fu- 
ture I already began to see a place among authors 
and no longer among reporters. There were some 
good literary societies in Liverpool, although the 
general tone of Liverpool's busy citizens was not 
very literary or artistic. There was a Catholic In- 
stitute at which young men of my own creed had 
opportunities of listening to addresses from emi- 
nent men, and even of delivering lectures them- 
selves if they felt courage and qualification for 
such a task. James Martineau, the famous Unita- 
rian preacher and teacher, was a ruling spirit 
among those of his own faith in Liverpool, and 
there was a literary institution, guided much by 
his inspiration, to which men of all faiths were 
welcomed as members. I soon found myself one 
of a considerable circle of young men deeply in- 
terested in books, and we used to hold meetings 
for the discussion of various subjects and for the 
reading of essays. 

I may mention that it was in Liverpool John 
Henry Newman, afterwards Cardinal Newman, 
delivered his famous lectures on the dominion of 

109 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

the Turks in Europe. This was just before the 
outbreak of the Crimean War, and the main pur- 
pose of the lectures was to maintain that the 
Ottoman power had estabhshed no claim what- 
ever to be accepted by Europe as a civilized and 
civilizing government. Newman declared emphat- 
ically, and this was indeed the moral of his dis- 
courses, that the Turk had no more right to any 
part of European soil than the pirate had to the 
seas which he ravaged. I heard these lectures and 
reported them for the " Northern Daily Times." 
The vast majority of Englishmen just then 
were enthusiastic for any policy directed against 
Russia, and were eager for an alliance with Louis 
Napoleon, and so the warnings of Newman were 
but little heeded. Every year which has passed 
since the Crimean War has done something to 
justify Newman's teaching, and at the period we 
have now reached the English mind is becoming 
more and more convinced that there cannot pos- 
sibly be peace or prosperity in the southeast of 
Europe while the Ottoman power is still per- 
mitted to hold in servitude European and Chris- 
tian populations. 

One of the leading public men in Liverpool 
at this time was Robertson Gladstone, the elder 
but not the eldest brother of William Ewart 
Gladstone. Robertson Gladstone was one of the 
tallest men I have ever seen outside a show 
of giants. He was much taller than Thackeray; 

no 



FROM LEE TO MERSEY 

he was taller than Samuel Whitbread or Cecil 
Raikes, who for a long time disputed the dignity 
of being the tallest member of the House of Com- 
mons. I have heard Robertson Gladstone say that 
he always felt uneasy and uncomfortable while 
walking in the London streets — groups of peo- 
ple as he passed would come to a halt and stare 
wonderingly after him. In his own Liverpool, he 
said, everybody knew him, and nobody made any 
demonstration of surprise at his appearance. He 
was a leading man in politics and in local affairs, 
and although he had not his brother's magnificent 
gift of eloquence, he was a very impressive speaker 
and never uttered a commonplace. He was a 
master of finance, and I have often heard on very 
good authority that his brother, when Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, used always to consult him and 
to have his assistance in the preparation of the 
Budget and the careful working out of its finan- 
cial schemes. Robertson Gladstone, like his bro- 
ther, had begun life as a Tory, but he too had 
become converted to Liberal doctrines, and before 
long he went far ahead of William Ewart Glad- 
stone in the extreme radicalism of his opinions. 
There was a certain amount of eccentricity about 
him which made him the subject of occasional ridi- 
cule among his political opponents, but Robertson 
Gladstone was so intensely in earnest in the main- 
tenance of his own views that he never seemed 
to take the slightest notice of any efforts made 

III 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

to turn him and them into subjects for jest and 
laughter. He was himself by no means devoid of 
the quality of humour, but while he was concerned 
in advocating a cause he troubled himself little 
about anything but its advocacy, and paid no at- 
tention to anything personal which his opponents 
might choose to say about him. 

A yet more remarkable and much more pictur- 
esque figure which I remember to have seen often 
in the streets of Liverpool was that of Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, the great American novelist, who held 
for some years the position of United States Con- 
sul in the great seaport town of the Mersey. Haw- 
thorne was one of the handsomest men I ever saw. 
His noble features, his eyes now flashing with sud- 
den light, now dreamily meditative, must have im- 
pressed even the least artistic of observers. I can 
well remember that the first time I passed him in a 
Liverpool street I became vividly impressed by his 
appearance and eager to know who he might be, not 
having at the time the least suspicion that he was 
the author of " The Scarlet Letter," " The Blithe- 
dale Romance," and other books equally dear to 
me. I used to see Hawthorne often after that first 
day and when I had come to know who he was. 
Only once, I think, had I any opportunity of en- 
tering into conversation with him, and that was on 
the occasion of the launch of a ship in the Mersey, 
when the American Consul was not likely to have 
much chance of conversing with so inconsiderable 

112 



FROM LEE TO MERSEY 

a person as myself. Hawthorne was one of the 
shyest of men, and I often wondered at the time 
how he ever contrived to get on in such a position 
as that of American Consul in Liverpool, where 
he was certain to be besieged all day by crowds of 
his own travelling countrymen, and by commercial 
Englishmen and shippers eager to transact busi- 
ness with him. I remember that in those far-off 
days he used to wear, when the weather was cold, 
a heavy plaid shawl wrapped around his shoulders 
and breast — a garment common enough among 
men of that time, but now as unlikely to be seen 
on Liverpool streets as the crimson cloak of a 
mediaeval cavalier. He often had a little boy with 
him in his walks, a little boy whom I afterwards 
came to know well when he had grown to be the 
distinguished author, Julian Hawthorne. Among 
my recollections of Liverpool there are no memo- 
ries more picturesque than those which I associ- 
ate with Nathaniel Hawthorne and his son. 

Meanwhile I had been venturing on bold enter- 
prises in the paths of literature. On the sugges- 
tion of some of my friends and encouraged by 
their support, I had actually undertaken the deliv- 
ery of a series of lectures in the public hall of a 
local educational institution. My first lecture dis- 
played most assuredly courage, not to say audacity, 
for it had as its subject the works of Goethe. I 
look back with a certain qualified admiration and 
almost unqualified wonder on my venture on such 

113 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

an undertaking. I had been a great reader of 
Goethe's dramas, novels, and poems, and I flat- 
tered myself that I was able to appreciate them. 
So with the reckless self-confidence of a young 
man I delivered my lecture, and at all events I 
did not break down in its delivery. I think I had 
one advantage in this my first appearance before 
a Liverpool audience. I gave my address extempo- 
raneously and without the assistance of any notes 
whatever. In truth, I never had the art of prepar- 
ing carefully a lecture or speech — I could only 
think over the subject and then allow the words 
to take care of themselves when I rose in front of 
my audience and began to speak. If I were to 
write out carefully the whole of an address, I should 
not be able to commit it to memory, and my short 
sight prevents me from making ready use of writ- 
ten notes. Therefore it was my way throughout 
the whole of my public career to think out my sub- 
ject as well as I could beforehand, and to trust to 
the moment of speaking for the form of words my 
thoughts were to adopt. I can quite believe that 
this is not the way in which really great lectures 
and speeches are made ; but then I did not fancy 
myself capable under any conditions of delivering 
a really great lecture or speech, and so I allowed 
myself to follow my own way. I have delivered 
many courses of lectures during later years, have 
spoken from a great many public platforms, and 
have many times succeeded in catching the eye 

114 



FROM LEE TO MERSEY 

of Mr. Speaker in the House of Commons, but 
I have always trusted to the inspiration of the 
moment for the words which were to embody my 
convictions and my arguments. This was, I think, 
the one advantage I had in these my first at- 
tempts at lecturing. The audience understood 
that it was being talked to, and not treated to 
an elaborate display going over its head. Thus 
an active sympathy was created from the first 
between the lecturer and his listeners. I gave 
lectures on Schiller and Jean Paul Richter, and 
afterwards I condescended so far as to give dis- 
courses concerning plays of Massinger and Web- 
ster and Dekker — mere English authors, whom 
any Briton could read for himself — and even on 
the novels of Fielding and Smollett. 

In the mean time some Liverpool friends of 
mine had actually ventured to start a Liverpool 
comic weekly paper in a sort of far-off and modest 
rivalry with " Punch," or, to do them justice, I 
should rather say in modest imitation of " Punch; " 
for, although young writers, they were much too 
reasonable to fancy that they could approach to 
anything like the wit and humour of the great 
London " Charivari." The new paper was called 
" The Porcupine," and it set up its quills with 
some vigour of aggressiveness. To " The Porcu- 
pine " I became a regular contributor in verse as 
well as in prose, and I continued to write for it 
after I had left Liverpool. Another literary oppor- 

115 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

tunity opened before me. There was then a review 
called the "London Quarterly," which had a con- 
siderable circulation, chiefly among the dissenting 
denominations, and its editor was in the habit of 
paying visits every now and then to Liverpool. 
Through the kindness of some friends I was 
brought into acquaintanceship with him and re- 
ceived an invitation to contribute to the review. 
He even suggested a subject for my first attempt, 
and I readily undertook the enterprise. The arti- 
cle, when finished, was fortunate enough to please 
this not too exacting editor, and the reader may 
imagine if he can what my feelings of wonder and 
gratification were when shortly after its publication 
I received a cheque for nine guineas with an invita- 
tion to send in further contributions. My salary as 
a reporter was at that time just two guineas a week, 
with a moderate extra allowance for my work as 
a reviewer and dramatic critic, and to receive nine 
guineas all in a lump for one literary article cov- 
ering but a few pages of the " London Quarterly " 
seemed to me an event foreshadowing a way to ap- 
proaching fortune. The articles in the " London 
Quarterly " were of course, like those of all the other 
contemporary reviews, published anonymously; 
but the mere fact that an article of mine had been 
thought worthy of publication and payment by a 
London periodical seemed to me a bright omen for 
my literary future. I continued to write for the 
" London Quarterly," and it so happened that the 

ii6 



FROM LEE TO MERSEY 

very last year of my residence in Liverpool was the 
occasion of a centenary celebration in honour of 
the birth of Schiller. I wrote an article on Schiller 
and his centenary celebration for the " London 
Quarterly," and to my utter astonishment and 
delight it attracted the attention of the German 
committee who had organized the ceremonial. 
The committee found out, through the kindness, ' 
I suppose, of the "London Quarterly" editor, who 
the writer of the article was, and I received from 
them an exquisite medallion of Schiller's head in 
clay, which had been modelled for distribution in 
honour of the occasion. Never before had I felt 
so proud of any piece of good fortune. Through 
all the long years which have passed between that 
time and the present that medallion has ever been 
with me, and it is an ornament of my study as I 
settle down to my daily work. My eyes turn to it 
with a loving sentiment at the present moment. 

The progress I had made in literature, such as 
it was, began to fill me with an ever increasing 
wish to try my chances in London. My father and 
mother had been with me for some time in Liver- 
pool, and then an event had taken place which I 
have already anticipated in these pages. During 
my first brief visit to Liverpool I had fallen in love, 
and before I had long settled down in the city of 
the Mersey the love had been crowned" by mar- 
riage. It was a romantic marriage in every sense; 
for it had neither money nor clear prospects to jus- 

117 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

tify it, and according to all the regular prosaic 
calculations it ought to have ended in disaster. 
It did not so end, however; for it was happy and 
prosperous in every true sense, and I had four 
and twenty years of the closest and dearest com- 
panionship — a companionship which was inter- 
rupted only by the death of my wife. I have not 
•given my readers much of my family affairs, and 
the story of my love and marriage is told in these 
few lines. 

During my work in Liverpool I first came to 
appreciate the genius, the purposes, and the elo- 
quence of Richard Cobden and John Bright. I 
heard the two for the first time at a great meeting 
in the Free Trade Hall of Manchester, and I shall 
never forget the impression produced on me by 
the speeches they then delivered. Afterwards I 
heard them both in other Lancashire towns, at 
open-air meetings and in public halls. During my 
visits to Chester I more than once saw William 
Ewart Gladstone, in the red jacket and hunting- 
cap of those days, mounted on the horse which he 
knew so well how to ride, going to or returning 
from some sporting expedition in that region. 
Gladstone was a splendid rider, and was declared 
by Rarey, the famous American horse tamer of 
that time, to be the finest horseman he had ever 
seen in England. One event of a very different 
kind associated with the name and fame of Glad- 
stone was a memorable occurrence in my life. It 

ii8 



FROM LEE TO MERSEY 

was while Gladstone was Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer, and the introduction of his Budget was 
looked for with the deepest interest in Liverpool. 
The " Northern Daily Times " determined to have 
a special report of his speech introducing the 
Budget, and I was one of the three reporters chosen 
to take notes of the speech. This may now seem 
a task easy of accomplishment and involving no 
particular difficulty, but the arrangements of the 
House of Commons were then very different, so 
far as the newspaper press was concerned, from 
those prevailing at present. There were no places 
reserved in the Reporters' gallery for representa- 
tives of the provincial press, and we might as well 
have expected to get seats on the green benches 
of the House itself as to find seats in the gallery 
allotted to the staffs of the London daily papers. 
Fortunately for our enterprise, Mr. Cardwell, after- 
wards Lord Cardwell, was then one of the mem- 
bers for Liverpool, and he was very anxious to 
assist us in our endeavour to convey to his constit- 
uents a full report of Gladstone's speech at the 
earliest possible opportunity. Mr. Cardwell pre- 
vailed upon the Sergeant-at-Arms to make some 
sort of arrangement, and we got a table set out for 
us in a corridor behind the last row of the Stran- 
gers' gallery. Now the seats in the last row or two 
of the Strangers' gallery itself are but ill adapted 
for the full hearing of all that goes on in the 
House of Commons, and if the Chancellor of the 

119 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

Exchequer had been any other man than Mr. 
Gladstone, we should probably have made but a 
poor piece of work of our reporting, placed as we 
were at the back of the gallery and with a partition 
of glass shutting us off still more from the sound 
of the orator's words. Our nervous anxiety and 
trepidation were raised to feverish height during 
all the opening part of the evening's business, for 
we found that we could hardly hear a consecutive 
sentence of any question asked or answer given 
during the preliminaries of the great debate. But 
when Gladstone rose to deliver his speech, all 
doubt and fear vanished from our minds. That 
magnificent voice, that expressive intonation, sat- 
isfied us from the first sentence that not a word of 
his speech was likely to be lost upon our attentive 
ears. We accomplished our full report, then wrote 
out our " copy," and the whole of the speech ap- 
peared the next morning in the columns of the 
** Northern Daily Times." It was a great triumph 
for us, the three reporters, and we felt very proud 
of our achievement, although its whole success was 
due to the fact that Mr. Gladstone could make 
every word of his speech heard by us where most 
of his predecessors and his successors must have 
failed to make a single sentence clearly heard by 
note-takers divided from him by such obstacles 
and such a distance. 

I must bring to a close the narrative of my 
experiences in Liverpool. During the year 1859 

120 



FROM LEE TO MERSEY 

I received an offer of an engagement as reporter 
on a London newspaper, the " Morning Star." 
The " Morning Star " had been at that time little 
more than three years in existence. It was a jour- 
nal started to advocate the principles of Cobden 
and Bright, and at the time there was a general 
feeling of doubt as to the possibility of its success. 
I was, however, only too delighted to catch at the 
opportunity thus afforded to me of beginning a 
career in London. My choice would have been 
the same in any case, but it was further stimulated 
by the fact that the "Northern Daily Times" 
was becoming a financial failure. I had lately 
been acting as one of its editors, and I can only 
hope that no ill-natured reader will see in this fact 
a further explanation of the journal's want of suc- 
cess. However that may be, it was quite certain 
that th'e paper must soon cease to be published, 
and my only choice was between trying to obtain 
an engagement on some other Liverpool paper and 
accepting the offer made to me by the conductors 
of the " Morning Star." I may say that I had 
made a previous attempt to secure an engagement 
in London at the suggestion of the celebrated 
authoress, Harriet Martineau. Miss Martineau 
was then living in the Lake country, and she had 
chanced to read an article of mine in a London 
magazine which she was kind enough to think 
showed some qualification for better work than 
that of a reporter on a Liverpool newspaper. She 

121 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

had a brother-in-law, a distinguished physician 
then settled in Liverpool, with whom I was well 
acquainted, and she wrote to him offering to give 
me an introduction to the editor of the " Daily- 
News," the London journal to which she was then 
a regular contributor. My pride and delight may 
be easily imagined when I received this kindly 
notice from so distinguished a woman as Harriet 
Martineau. I hurried up to London and presented 
my literary introduction, but I came at an unlucky 
time, as the Parliamentary session had begun, and 
the arrangements for the reporting staff of the 
" Daily News " were already made. I went back 
to Liverpool disappointed, indeed, but by no means 
downcast, for the approval of Harriet Martineau 
was enough to give me full assurance that I might 
have some hopes of making my way into London 
journalism. I never saw Harriet Martineau, but I 
always regarded her kindly interest in me as the 
first assuring warrant I had ever received for my 
literary ambition. To get some place on a Lon- 
don journal was the first step, and I fondly hoped 
that the rest might come in time. I accepted, 
therefore, with a gladsome heart the engagement 
on the " Morning Star," and in the early days of 
i860 I became a resident of London. 



122 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE "MORNING STAR " 

The *' Morning Star " was fighting a difficult battle 
at the time when I became attached to its report- 
ing staff. It was advocating extreme Radical doc- 
trines, was opposed to all wars except such as were 
purely defensive, condemned the policy of annex- 
ation and mere conquest, went in for the removal 
of all religious disabilities, and stood up for the 
equal rights of all citizens. It was never what its 
many opponents insisted on calling it, the " peace 
at any price "organ, and although it was constantly 
accused of endeavouring to Americanise British 
institutions, it carried its Americanising principles 
only so far as to declare that every man not dis- 
qualified by crime was entitled to a free vote in 
the election of his parliamentary representative, 
and that the State ought to provide the means 
for giving education to the poorest of its citizens. 
The paper was not carried on as a financial specu- 
lation, but solely for the purpose of diffusing its 
own political and economical doctrines ; and so 
long as it was able to pay its way, its leading pro- 
prietors would have been well content to carry it 
on without any prospect of gain. « It was the organ 

123 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

of the party led by Cobden and Bright. Cobden 
was not a shareholder in the " Morning Star," and 
Bright only held some shares in the paper as the 
representative of a near relation. In that capacity 
Bright had a seat on the board of management 
and was a frequent visitor to the editorial offices, 
where he helped to guide, by his personal advice 
and inspiration, the policy of the journal. When 
I joined the " Morning Star," its editor was the late 
Samuel Lucas, a brother-in-law of John Bright, 
and its business manager was Alfred Hutchinson 
Dymond, who afterwards won a distinguished 
position in the Canadian Parliament and finally 
became the head of a great State institution in 
Brantford, Canada, for the education of the deaf 
and dumb. I only remained in the Reporters' 
gallery for one session, and I was then offered, 
greatly to my satisfaction, the place of foreign 
editor — the editor of that part of the journal 
which had to deal with news from abroad. I 
had picked up certain literary acquaintance with 
French, German, Italian, and Spanish ; in other 
words, although I did not profess to speak even 
French and German with colloquial facility, I 
could read and translate from the languages I 
have mentioned with accuracy and ease. 

In the mean time I had received very remark- 
able and wholly unexpected encouragement from 
a great Englishman whom up to that time I had 
never seen, John Stuart Mill. It came to pass in 

124 



THE "MORNING STAR" 

this way. While I was still a reporter in the gal- 
lery, I wrote an article of considerable length on 
" Voltaire's Romances and their Moral," in which 
I expressed my own views on the subject, and I 
sent the article to the " Westminster Review," 
which at that time was exercising a considerable 
influence among those whom I may describe as 
advanced thinkers in England and abroad. I sent 
my article to the " Westminster Review," and I 
did not know at the time even the name of the 
editor. Dr. John Chapman, who afterwards be- 
came a personal friend of mine. To my great 
delight and almost equal surprise, the article was 
at once accepted by the editor, and was published 
in the next number of the " Review." I thought 
it a wonderful stroke of success that my very 
first contribution should be thus welcomed and 
promptly given to the public. But my feelings 
cannot easily be told when, shortly after the pub- 
lication of the number, I received a letter from 
the editor telling me that John Stuart Mill had 
written to him expressing his entire approval of 
my article, and adding a wish , to know the name 
of its author. Mill had at one time been the ed- 
itor of the " Westminster Review," and he still 
took a deep interest in its work and progress. 
No word of encouragement and praise could pos- 
sibly have been more welcome to me then than 
the words which came from John Stuart Mill, 
and I began to believe that the world of literature 

125 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

was opening up for me. But that was not all. 
Dr. Chapman invited me to write an article on 
Buckle's work, " The History of Civilization in 
England." I attempted the task not without much 
doubt and misgiving, greatly as my vanity of 
authorship had been stimulated by Mill's kindly 
words. Soon after the appearance of the article 
in print, I received another letter from Dr. Chap- 
man, telHng me that "Mill has again given you 
the garland," — in other words, that Mill had once 
again gone out of his way to express his approval 
of my contribution. My good fortune with these 
articles won for me the personal acquaintanceship 
of Mill, who lived so retired a life that he seldom 
came in the way of making new acquaintances. 
I received from him much kindness and encour- 
agement, and had the honour of being admitted 
to the circle of his friends. 

My association with the editorial department 
of the " Morning Star " brought me into close 
and frequent intercourse with John Bright, and I 
think I may say that during the remainder of his 
life I always had the honour of his friendship. 
Richard Cobden also I came to know and used to 
meet often. The " Morning Star " went in very 
much for literary work of all kinds, and had on its 
staff some men who were already distinguished 
in the literature of the time. We used to have as a 
regular institution an afternoon tea at five o'clock 
every day in the editorial rooms of the " Star," 

126 



THE "MORNING STAR" 

and there we talked over and arranged the con- 
tents of the next morning's issue and assigned to 
each writer the work which seemed best suited 
to him. During those early days on the "Star" 
I obtained my first and only opportunity of un- 
dertaking the work of special correspondent in 
a foreign country. This was on the coronation of 
William I., King of Prussia, that Prussian King 
who was afterwards proclaimed German Emperor 
at Versailles. The coronation of the new King 
took place at Konigsberg, and for many reasons 
it was regarded as an event of great importance in 
the political affairs of Europe. The editor of the 
" Morning Star " asked me to become its spe- 
cial correspondent and describe the ceremonials 
in East Prussia, and I accepted the offer with 
much delight. I had never before visited any part 
of the Continent, and I felt an especial interest 
in Germany and the German people, chiefly no 
doubt because of my love for German literature. 

I felt very proud of being chosen for such a 
duty, and I felt also highly gratified at the oppor- 
tunity thus given to me to visit a foreign land. 
I crossed the Channel to Ostend, and there set 
my foot for the first time on Continental soil. 
I had taken good care to start in such time as 
to afford me a chance of seeing all I could along 
the way. I set out armed with the necessary pass- 
ports, a very essential provision in those days, 
and also with letters of introduction from Austen 

127 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

Henry Layard, who was then under-Secretary 
for Foreign Affairs. I went from Ostend to Co- 
logne, where I spent two or three days looking on 
as much of the Rhine as I could see during the 
time at my disposal ; and although the Rhine 
is not seen to its best advantage in October, yet 
it was the Rhine, a river hallowed in my mind 
by legend and history and poetry, one of the 
sacred rivers of my dreams. Disraeli, in " Vivian 
Grey," apostrophizes the Rhine as the " river of 
my youth," and I think it was the river of our 
youth to all of us who were still under the influ- 
ence of Byron and Goethe and Heine. So I 
gazed upon the Rhine with the eyes of a lover 
and a worshipper, and then I made my way on 
to Berlin. Here I had to remain for some days 
in order to obtain my necessary warrants of ad- 
mission to the ceremonials at Konigsberg, and 
I spent my time most happily in studying all the 
places of historic interest in and near the city, 
wandering in the Thiergarten, and visiting the 
theatres every evening — a pastime which I must 
have allowed to myself in any case for the mere 
pleasure of the thing, but which I told myself 
was now a necessary part of my duty, as it gave 
me an opportunity of improving my acquaintance 
with the German language as spoken. Then came 
the long and somewhat weary journey to far-off 
Konigsberg — not, however, quite dreary to me, 
because I loved to see the country we were pass- 

128 



THE "MORNING STAR" 

ing through, and had some sort of mental associa- 
tion with every town and station through which 
we passed. The end came at last, and late one 
evening I reached Konigsberg. 

The town, as may well be imagined, was crowded 
to excess with official and other visitors from all 
parts of the civilized world, and I had the utmost 
difficulty in obtaining a lodging of any kind. I 
found a place in the house of a worthy citizen 
who was making the best possible use of the op- 
portunity to obtain good prices for his rooms. At 
a rate which might have seemed extravagant for 
accommodation in a first-class hotel of Berlin or 
Paris or London, I got the use of one small room 
during the whole of the coronation and its sub- 
sequent festivities in a poor and out-of-the-way 
quarter of the ancient town. As an illustration of 
the immense demand for lodgings, I may mention 
that the bedroom next to mine, the only room then 
left at the disposal of visitors, was engaged soon 
after my arrival by a merchant from Berlin, with 
his wife and his sister-in-law, who were only too 
glad to get it on any terms. How the three man- 
aged to bestow themselves in this one small room 
I never could understand, but they must have con- 
trived to do it somehow. I believe the merchant, 
who was a wealthy man, had tried in vain for other 
rooms anywhere, and was glad at last to get this 
one enclosure on any terms. I may add that his 
one room opened out of my one room, and that he 

129 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

and his wife and his sister-in-law had to pass 
through my apartment every time they desired to 
go abroad or to return to their narrow abode. My 
host was an intelligent man, belonging, like a good 
many others in Konigsberg, to the Jewish faith. 
He made himself very serviceable to me by acting 
as my guide to all the most interesting parts of 
the town and its neighbourhood and showing me 
with especial interest the places associated with 
the life of Immanuel Kant. With my early Ger- 
man studies still fresh in my memory, I found the 
walks associated with Kant more intensely attrac- 
tive than any other places belonging to the ancient 
historic city. 

When I entered Konigsberg, I found the whole 
place alive with drumming and trumpeting, with 
discharge of cannon, with marching of troops and 
processions of citizens. There were public festivi- 
ties incessantly going on, and through my letters 
of introduction I obtained invitations to all of 
these. I was much amused by the grandiloquence 
of some of the invitation cards I received, in which 
I found myself set forth as the " High and Well- 
born Justin McCarthy " and so forth. I need not 
enter into any description of the coronation cere- 
monial, which took place in the picturesque old 
cathedral of Konigsberg, further than to mention 
that the musical service was conducted by the 
illustrious Meyerbeer in person, who died not 
quite three years after. The figure of Meyerbeer 

130 



THE "MORNING STAR" 

was more interesting to me at the time than that 
of the new sovereign who was destined to become 
the German Emperor; but there was one other fig- 
ure in the Konigsberg ceremonial which impressed 
me with a deep and thrilling interest. It was that 
of the great statesman who was then merely de- 
scribed as Herr von Bismarck. The form of that 
rising statesman seemed even then to overshadow 
all others. His very presence had command in it. 
Bismarck had certainly no claim to be regarded 
as a handsome man, but he was tall, of almost 
gigantic mould, and his every movement suggested 
a sense of conscious authority and power. I had 
the honour to be presented to him at Konigsberg. 
I found him very genial ; he talked freely, and it 
was an especial relief to me, with my imperfect 
German, when I found that Bismarck could speak 
English with perfect fluency and accuracy, although 
with a very strong German accent. I met Bismarck 
afterwards during the ceremonials and pageantry 
at Berlin, and had some opportunities of convers- 
ing with him. Like most educated Germans, he 
was very well acquainted with the great English 
authors, and his parliamentary speeches were often 
marked by singularly happy and appropriate quo- 
tations from Chaucer and Shakespeare and from 
living English writers, such as Carlyle and John 
Stuart Mill. On the whole, this my first visit to 
Prussia was for me a most interesting, instruc- 
tive, and happy time, as it well might be, seeing 

131 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

that it was my introduction to the Rhine and to 
Bismarck. 

Some time after my return to London, my dear 
old friend Samuel Lucas died prematurely, and I 
was appointed to fill his vacant place. Thus for 
the first and last time I became the editor of a 
London daily newspaper. There was an evening 
edition of the " Star " called the " Evening Star," 
and in this evening edition there appeared every 
day literary articles, many of them humorous, some 
of them grave and earnest, some picturesque and 
poetic. Such contributions were not then common 
in London daily journalism, and they gave to the 
" Evening Star " a peculiar stamp. We had many 
contributions sent in by young writers then abso- 
lutely unknown to us or to the public, and it was 
my good fortune to be able to give the first oppor- 
tunity to some men who afterwards made them- 
selves famous. Among these I may especially 
mention three names, — the names of William 
Black, the brilliant novelist, Archibald Forbes, the 
famous war correspondent, and Richard White- 
ing, whose wonderful story " No. 5 John Street " 
lifted him into a broad bright literary renown, 
which indeed his previous efforts deserved as well, 
but for some lack of appreciation on the part of 
the public had failed to secure. William Black 
became attached to the editorial staff of the 
" Morning Star," and held his place, I think, until 
it ceased to exist. We had many other writers of 

132 



THE "MORNING STAR" 

fame on the literary staff of the " Star," men like 
Edmund Yates and Leicester Buckingham, both of 
whom have long since passed away, but each was a 
well-known writer when he began to contribute 
to the "Star," and the editors of that journal could 
not claim any merit for having recognised their 
literary capacity. But the " Star " had the great 
honour of first bringing under the notice of the 
public the writings of Black, of Forbes, and of 
Whiteing. I may fairly say that the journal which 
gave such men their first chance of addressing the 
world cannot be set down as having lived in vain, 
and the mere discovery of them alone may well 
entitle the " Morning Star " to an honourable 
place in the history of journalism. 

An important incident in my journalistic life 
was my introduction to the personal acquaintance- 
ship of Robert Browning. Tennyson and Carlyle 
I had already met, although only casually, and I 
never had anything more than the slightest per- 
sonal acquaintance with the great poet and the 
great prose writer. Dickens and Thackeray I had 
met in the same sort of way, but I was brought 
somewhat more closely under the notice of Thack- 
eray, and I actually had an invitation to dine with 
him. The dinner-party, however, to which I had 
been looking forward with the most intense antici- 
pations of delight, never came off, for Thackeray's 
sudden death sent a shock through the whole civ- 
ilized world just before the appointed day. 

133 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

I was introduced to Robert Browning by John 
Bright. There was not much poHtical sympathy 
between a practical Radical orator and statesman 
like Bright and a poet like Browning, but they 
were friends nevertheless, and each man was well 
able to appreciate the genius and sincerity of the 
other. I published in the '* Morning Star " an 
audacious burlesque on Tennyson's " Northern 
Farmer," in which Lord Palmerston was made to 
appear as the Northern Farmer and to talk in his 
dialect ; but the description which the farmer gives 
of himself and his shrewd purposes was converted 
into a satire on Palmerston's political projects and 
his resolve to stick to his ministerial place as long 
as he lived. Browning was amused, — probably by 
the reckless absurdity of the satirical transposition, 
— and he asked Bright whether he knew who had 
written the lines. Bright said that he could easily 
find out, and he had no trouble in discovering their 
author when he next visited the editorial rooms 
of the " Morning Star." Then Browning sent me 
a kindly message through Bright, and he gave 
me an introduction to the poet, whom, as he knew, 
I admired beyond any other then living. From 
that time forward I had increasing opportunities 
of meeting Browning, and our acquaintance lasted 
until his death. 

While I was still editor of the "Star," I made my 
first effort as the author of a published volume. 
Up to this time my name as a writer had not be- 

134 



THE "MORNING STAR" 

come known to the public ; for apart from my jour- 
nalistic work I wrote mostly for quarterly reviews, 
in which, according to the fashion of those days, 
the articles never bore the names of their writers. 
Now I made my first appeal to the public as a nov- 
elist. This first novel of mine came into existence 
under conditions which may be worth a brief notice. 
My first published novel was not my first attempt 
at novel writing. While I was still in Liverpool, I 
had planned out and partly written a story which 
came into my mind of its own accord and was 
entirely the child of my fancy. It remained unfin- 
ished, and it was not until I had been for some 
years settled in London that I consulted a pub- 
lisher about it. This publisher was a very sincere, 
fair-dealing man, but he did not go in much for 
the aesthetic or the highest ideals of the author's 
profession, and he honestly thought that if one 
writes a book he must naturally want to write a 
book which the public will buy. I sketched for 
him in words the story and characters I was work- 
ing into my unfinished novel, and he shook his 
head very discouragingly as I went on with my 
description. He told me that we were living in 
the reign of the sensation novel, and that a new 
and totally unknown writer who attempted any- 
thing different would have no chance of being 
read. He did not, however, want to discourage 
unreservedly my artistic ambition and he sug- 
gested a plan by which I might enter Mr. Mudie's 

135 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

citadel by means of a deceptive flag, if I may 
employ such a metaphor. He recommended me 
to go to work and write a thoroughly sensational 
novel, as sensational as they make or as I could 
make from beginning to end, and he offered to 
run the risk of bringing out this novel for me. 
Thus it would have at least a chance of being read, 
and even of obtaining a large circle of readers. 
Then I might go to work at my leisure and bring 
out the novel which was the child of my own fancy, 
and this being announced as by the author of the 
sensational masterpiece might, on the virtue of 
that introduction, find a large number of readers 
willing to open its pages. Some of these, no doubt, 
not finding their nerves thrilled or their hair made 
to stand on end by any of the opening chapters, 
would put it aside ; but others, having begun to 
read it, would go on with it and get to like it. At 
all events, there would be a chance of its obtaining 
a hearing which otherwise it might never get. 

I took my friend's advice and resolved to make 
a trial at a novel of sensation, with the hope of 
thereby securing an introduction for the novel of 
my own choice. So I wrote a sensation story. It 
opened with a sensation ; it ended with a sensa- 
tion ; it was, in fact, all throbbing with sensation. 
My friendly publisher was as goody as his word; he 
brought it out for me in excellent style, and it really 
had a sort of success and received some gratifying 
notices from critical journals. We published on 

136 



THE "MORNING STAR" 

the principle of sharing profits, and my publisher 
handed over to me a larger sum of money than I 
had ever expected to get from the transaction. I 
may mention the fact that at a later period of my 
literary career I withdrew this novel from circula- 
tion and suppressed it altogether so far as I could, 
for I did not care to have my name associated with 
a piece of work which was only done in the hope 
of catching a passing public fancy. The reader of 
these pages will see that I am not telling the story 
of how my first novel came to be born with any 
design of inducing him or her to send out and buy 
a copy of it and thus add to its circulation. I went 
to work at once on another novel, which was not 
in the least sensational, but yet was not my origi- 
nal effort at writing romance. I felt inclined to 
put off for a time the completion of my first at- 
tempt and to think it over more carefully, while 
working at another story which had been indi- 
rectly suggested to me by events and figures 
coming within the range of my observation. My 
postponed story, with its incidents, its figures, and 
its central idea, was entirely the offspring of my 
own imagination, and I began to doubt whether 
I understood the conditions and the surround- 
ings of the story well enough to make it seem like 
a living reality. I devoted whatever spare time I 
could to working at the novel which was to be my 
second published effort in that order of literature. 
This novel was called "The Waterdale Neigh- 

137 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

hours," and I believe I may say that it had a 
distinct success. Then I went back to my first 
attempt, and it was completed and published under 
the title of " My Enemy's Daughter." It appeared 
in the first instance as a serial story in one of the 
London monthly magazines and at the same time 
in " Harper's Magazine," New York. My own idea 
was to call it " A Daughter of Music," but the 
publisher thought that name had been already 
used, and at the suggestion of Miss Braddon, one 
of the most popular novelists then as now, I sent 
it to the world with the name I have already told. 
I have often thought that if it were to do again I 
could have worked out the story more effectively, 
but I presume this is an idea which has occurred 
to most novelists after the publication of a favour- 
ite story. Anyhow, the book had a public recep- 
tion favourable enough to encourage me in the 
belief that I might hold to novel writing as one, at 
least, of my occupations in life. Between the ap- 
pearance of " The Waterdale Neighbours " and that 
of " My Enemy's Daughter," I published a volume 
of essays chiefly on books and their authors, which 
appeared under the title of " Con Amore " and 
received some favourable notices from English 
critics. The first essay in the volume, that on 
" Voltaire's Romances," had already received the 
approval of John Stuart Mill. 

The work of him who is editor of a London 
daily newspaper is one, I need hardly say, of con- 

138 



THE "MORNING STAR" 

tinual stress and strain. Saturday alone gives to 
the editor anything Hke a day of rest in the week. 
Sunday is as busy as any of the recognised 
working days, and even on Saturday the editor 
has much work on hand which he cannot afford 
to put altogether out of his mind. My principal 
colleagues in the editing and leader writing of the 
paper were the sub-editor, Charles Cooper, who 
not long after became first sub-editor and later 
on editor of the Edinburgh " Scotsman " ; Edward 
Russell, now Sir Edward Russell, editor of the 
Liverpool " Daily Post," who was for some time a 
parliamentary colleague of mine in the House 
of Commons ; Edward D. J. Wilson, now a dis- 
tinguished writer of leading articles for " The 
Times"; the late Frederick W. Chesson, deservedly 
remembered because of his work as Secretary of the 
Aborigines' Protection Society; and some other 
men whose names I have already mentioned. It 
was becoming clear to my mind that the editing of 
a London daily journal was too absorbing and un- 
ceasing an occupation to give me much oppor- 
tunity for my other literary work, and I was be- 
coming anxious to do something in the way of 
contemporary history and also to see a little of 
the world. Up to this time I had not been able 
to do much travel. I had a three weeks' holiday 
in the autumn of every year, and these holidays I 
devoted to visiting France, Germany, and Switzer- 
land, but had not yet found time to pay a visit to 

139 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

Italy and make a study of Rome, Florence, Ven- 
ice, and Naples. I had a strong desire also to visit 
the New World and become acquainted with the 
United States and Canada. I was therefore on 
the lookout for some favourable opportunity of 
withdrawing from the unceasing toil of the edito- 
rial position, but I was naturally reluctant to give 
up a certain engagement for mere literary chances. 
Soon I had a spur to the side of my intent. It 
was becoming more and more certain that John 
Bright would have to join a Liberal administra- 
tion, and Bright himself told me that if or when 
such an event should come to pass, he would no 
longer take any part in or exercise any influence 
over the direction of the " Morning Star." Bright 
had a strong conscientious conviction that it was 
not right for a member of an administration to 
have anything to do with the control of a political 
newspaper, and I knew well that with him to have 
a conscientious conviction and to act implicitly 
upon it were one and the same thing. The bond 
which mainly held me to the " Morning Star " 
was my devotion to John Bright and the compan- 
ionship with him which my position on the paper 
procured for me. Bright came to my room very 
often while the House of Commons was sitting. 
He used to bring me the latest tidings of what 
was going on in the House, and talk over with 
me the course which the " Star " ought to adopt 
as to this or that promised or threatened policy on 

140 



THE "MORNING STAR" 

the part of Government or Opposition. I had 
come to regard him as the most valuable and high- 
minded counsellor, as the most companionable of 
friends, and to feel honoured and delighted by his 
confidence. No memories of my life are more 
sacred to me than the recollections of my long 
intercourse with John Bright. I felt that when 
he should cease to have anything to do with the 
" Star," my principal motive for holding my labo- 
rious position would be gone. 

When I felt certain that Bright was soon to 
accept ofhce in a Liberal administration, — and 
the certainty came to me very soon, — I made 
up my mind to resign what is called the editorial 
chair and to try what would come of a visit to the 
United States. I had hopes that my story passing 
through " Harper's Magazine " might act as a sort 
of introduction to the American public, and that 
I should not appear as an absolute stranger in 
the literary world of the United States. Another 
strong and natural influence urging me to my 
project was the fact that my brother, whom I had 
not seen for many years, was married happily, 
and was living with his wife and his children near 
to the city of New York. Most Irishmen at that 
time had begun to regard the United States as a 
sort of second home, and I knew that on going 
out there I should meet with that brother and his 
family, whom otherwise I was never likely to see. 
I resigned my position as editor of the " Morning 

141 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

Star," and began to make preparation for my first 
visit to the United States. " Nothing in his life," 
says Malcolm of Cawdor in " Macbeth," " became 
him like the leaving it." I may, in a somewhat 
different sense, employ the same words in re- 
gard to my connection with the *' Morning Star." 
Nothing in my occupation of the editorial chair 
seemed to bring to me so much honour as the fact 
that I was succeeded in it by so great an author 
and statesman as John Morley. 

My resolve to pay a visit to the United States 
was supported and stimulated by the advice of 
some American friends, and especially by the ad- 
vice of Cyrus W. Field, the celebrated projector 
of the great scheme for laying a submarine tele- 
graphic cable between England and America. 
Cyrus Field used to visit England very often 
while this work was going on, and during his 
visits he was in the habit of coming to see us very 
frequently in the editorial rooms of the " Morn- 
ing Star." I became his friend, and the friend- 
ship lasted until his death in 1892. Cyrus Field 
was of course devoted to the cause of the North- 
ern States, and the " Morning Star " had always 
upheld that cause at the time when the vast ma- 
jority of Englishmen who belonged to "society" 
and the higher classes were decidedly in favour of 
the South. From Cyrus Field I received a num- 
ber of letters of introduction to eminent Ameri- 
cans in many parts of the United States, and 

142 



THE "MORNING STAR" 

much useful advice as to the best way of employ- 
ing my time during my expedition. My friends 
got up for me in the kindliest fashion what we 
should now call " a send-off " in London, a meet- 
ing of well-wishers who desired to offer some 
parting words of encouragement. I remember 
that the late Hepworth Dixon was one of the 
speakers, that Cyrus Field spoke, and that my 
publisher of those days, the late William Tinsley, 
made what I believe to be his first and only at- 
tempt at a public speech on that occasion. I am 
not likely ever to forget some of the encouraging 
words spoken then of me, and though I was not 
vain enough to believe for a moment that I de- 
served them all, I was none the less touched by 
their sympathy, their good feeling, and their hope. 
With my wife and family I left England in the 
middle of September, 1868, and on board the 
North German Lloyd steamer Herman I crossed 
the Atlantic for the first time. 



143 



CHAPTER IX 

ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

When I reached the shores of New York and set 
foot on the quay at Hoboken, where the steamer 
Herman landed her passengers, I must frankly 
confess that my first thoughts were not given to 
the great city I was about to see, or to the scenery 
of the broad Hudson River. My feelings were cen- 
tred for the time on the fact that my brother was 
waiting on the wharf to give us a welcome. I had 
not seen him for many years, and we had been 
playmates from his infancy until the time when 
the need of striving for a living had impelled him 
to seek his fortune in the New World. We had 
gone through much trouble and much happiness 
together, and during one period of our separa- 
tion, when I knew that he was serving on the 
side of the North in the great Civil War, there 
were gloomy hours in which it seemed to me 
only too likely that we might never meet again on 
this earth. Now here we were clasping hands — 
together once more. I presented him to my wife, 
and he talked to me of his wife and young children, 
then in their home not far from New York. He 
took on himself all the business of our landing, 

144 



ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

arranged for the passing of our luggage through 
the custom house, then and always a difficult 
piece of business for the stranger to New York, 
and got us and our belongings into a hackney 
carriage and drove us to our headquarters in the 
Fifth Avenue Hotel, where we were to take up 
our residence for the time. Even as we drove 
there I hardly looked at the streets through which 
we passed, and paid little attention to the fact 
that we were mounting up Broadway, so much 
engrossed were we all in asking and answering 
questions about our families and our living and 
lost friends. We had not been long in the hotel 
before my brother's young wife came to see us, 
and between her and me there began a brotherly 
and sisterly affection which must live with our 
lives and beyond them. 

New York has changed much in size and out- 
ward appearance since those distant days of my 
first acquaintance with it. It has immensely out- 
grown its limits of that time. Houses and streets 
which used to be described then as " up-town " are 
now regarded as rather " down-town." The Fifth 
Avenue Hotel was the very centre of the city's 
fashionable region, and now New York extends 
for miles and miles into what was then but park 
and open country. There were no electric tram- 
ways in the city when I first knew it ; there was 
no elevated railway ; and I need hardly say that 
there were no motor-cars or bicycles. Far down- 

145 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

town towards the Wall Street region and the 
ferries, Broadway was spanned at its widest part 
by a great iron bridge. Even at that time, before 
the incursion of the electric cars, it was thought 
highly convenient to have that bridge as a safe 
and easy means by which passengers might cross 
from one side of the street to the other without 
peril to life or limb. In my wanderings down- 
town I made much use of this bridge, but rather 
as an observatory than as a means of transit. 
I used to spend delightful moments leaning over 
the railings of the bridge and watching the rivers 
of traffic flowing up and down Broadway. The 
whole life of New York appeared to move up and 
down under my eyes as I stood and gazed. No 
other city I had ever looked upon could have 
offered me such an opportunity for surveying its 
movements. New York was not built up in suc- 
cessive communities or cities as London was, in 
which the different communities or cities grad- 
ually grew into one another and formed a co- 
herent metropolis. New York was built upon a 
comparatively narrow island, and for a long time 
did not extend on either side beyond the island's 
limits. The whole growth of the city was therefore 
up-town. Broadway was the central street, and the 
great avenues of which Fifth Avenue made the 
elegant and fashionable region ran parallel with 
Broadway on either side. Standing on this Broad- 
way bridge, one could see the whole business 

146 



ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

world of New York moving up and down. Every 
man, woman, or child who had anything to do in 
the way of actual city business, outside the realms 
of millinery and such like crafts, had to move into 
Broadway in order to accomplish the desired pur- 
pose. No view of London or Paris, of Rome or 
Constantinople, is to be had from one particular 
point of the city at all comparable in its compre- 
hensiveness with the view of New York that 
could be seen from the bridge whereon I used 
to stand so often in those far-off days. It was 
a source of real regret to me that before my 
first visit to the United States had come to a 
close, the shopkeepers in the lower part of the 
city had made up their minds that the bridge 
was a mere nuisance to traffic, and after much 
agitation prevailed upon the local authorities to 
remove it altogether. When I next returned to 
New York, I mourned over the bridge as over 
a lost friend. 

I presented my letters of introduction and was 
received with great kindness and hospitality. One 
of the letters from Cyrus Field was to William 
Cullen Bryant, the venerable poet, who had many 
circles of devoted admirers in Great Britain and 
Ireland. It was still early autumn, and Bryant 
was living at his beautiful country place, Roslyn, 
on Long Island. When he got my letter, he 
came to see us at once, and not merely invited us 
to his Long Island home, but positively insisted, 

147 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

in his kindly and genial way, that he must carry 
us off for a few days' sojourn with him, and we 
were only too well pleased to be ruled by his 
hospitable pressure. My wife and I spent several 
days with him at Roslyn, — the first American 
country house we ever visited, — and most de- 
lightful days they were in every sense. The poet's 
daughter Julia kept house for him and was a 
most charming hostess. Bryant loved to show us 
his gardens, his flowers, his fruits, his favourite 
trees, and the many picturesque views which could 
be enjoyed from rising grounds in the neighbour- 
hood. He must have been then some seventy-five 
years of age, but he was as quick and ready in his 
movements as if he had not passed middle life, 
and despite his white hair, his long white beard, 
and bald forehead, he seemed to carry with him 
something like the elasticity of perpetual youth. 
He took much pleasure also in showing us his 
library, and in talking over his books and ex- 
changing ideas with us on all manner of hterary 
subjects. 

Bryant had travelled much in Europe and the 
East, and had visited England several times. He 
was one of the most variously educated men it 
has ever been my good fortune to meet. His clas- 
sical scholarship was of the highest order, and I 
think his translation of the " Iliad " one of the best 
English versions ever produced. He was inti- 
mately acquainted with the literature of France, 

148 



ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

Germany, Italy, and Spain, and could speak the 
languages of these countries with perfect fluency 
and with remarkable accuracy. I may mention 
that at a later period of my acquaintance with 
Bryant, the poet presided at a dinner given at 
Delmonico's Restaurant to a number of distin- 
guished foreign visitors who had come to New 
York, if I remember rightly, on the occasion of 
some international exhibition. Bryant had to in- 
troduce by a speech of his own each toast pro- 
posing the health of a foreign guest. He spoke, 
according as the toast suggested, in the language 
of the country from which the guest had come, 
and he seemed to captivate the several nation- 
alities by his linguistic skill, as well as by his 
natural gift of eloquence. 

During the winter months Bryant occupied a 
house in the fashionable part of New York, and 
there with his daughter he had a brilliant recep- 
tion every week, at which one was sure to meet 
the most distinguished representatives of art, let- 
ters, and political life, American and foreign, who 
happened then to be in the city. I was present 
at many of these receptions, and I have seldom 
spent pleasanter hours than those at his house. 
Bryant gave me later on a fine photograph of his 
own noble head and face, with his autograph on its 
margin, and that most valued picture still forms 
a conspicuous ornament of the study where I 
work. The house of William Cullen Bryant gave 

149 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

me my first introduction to social life in New 
York city. 

One of the distinguished men whom I met for 
the first time in Bryant's home was the scholar 
and author, the late George Ripley, who had in 
his earlier days been associated with Margaret 
Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others in estab- 
lishing that colony of Brook Farm the memory 
of which Hawthorne has embodied and made im- 
mortal in his '* Blithedale Romance." If there 
were nothing else to make me feel glad in my 
meeting with Ripley, the mere fact of his associa- 
tion with that book and with the gifted and phi- 
lanthropic group of authors, poets, and dreamers 
pictured so exquisitely in its pages would have 
been enough to make me regard him with the 
deepest interest ; but George Ripley was, for his 
own sake alone, a man whom everybody must 
have been delighted to meet. He was deeply read 
in literature and in history, and was in every sense 
the most charming companion. I came to know 
him well during my first visit to the United States, 
and I am glad to believe that he reckoned me 
among his friends. 

Another eminent American of a somewhat dif- 
ferent order whom I knew intimately was the 
late Horace Greeley, editor and chief owner of the 
New York " Tribune," a journal which then exer- 
cised, as it now exercises, the most important 
influence over public opinion in America. My 

150 



ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

wife and I were frequent visitors in Horace Gree- 
ley's home, and we could not but regard him with 
the highest respect and admiration. He was a 
very different sort of man from Bryant or Ripley ; 
he was not much of a classical student, and did 
not claim any high culture, or indeed any great 
interest in literature or art. He was eccentric in 
his habits as well as in his manners ; he never 
went in for the ways of society ; and he was an 
uncompromising teetotaller. He dressed in the 
most careless way, and never concerned himself 
about the fashion of the passing season. He often 
spoke out his opinions on various subjects with a 
frankness which took little account of the preju- 
dices or susceptibilities of his listeners. But he 
was a man of the purest and noblest character ; 
he was absolutely sincere and disinterested in all 
the ways and acts of his private life, and when 
once he had formed a decided opinion on some 
great public question, he was ready to back up 
that opinion with all that he was worth. He was 
above all things a politician — I mean in the 
higher sense, and not in that narrower sense 
which has lately applied the term for the most 
part to men who make politics their business and 
their trade. Greeley was as conscientious and as 
resolute in the maintenance of his convictions as 
John Bright or Richard Cobden, and, as might 
have been expected, he made many enemies and 
suffered many losses during this or that national 

151 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

crisis; but he held his way undaunted and followed 
only his inner guiding light. There were many 
public questions on which I could not agree with 
him, but I found none the less interest in talking 
them over with him and listening to his original 
and striking manner of ^enforcing and illustrating 
his views, and he often threw off on the spur of 
the moment phrases and sentences which would 
have been worthy of Benjamin Franklin. I heard 
him speak at many public meetings, and although 
he had not the slightest pretension to be classed 
among orators, yet he could always command pro- 
found attention by the homespun simplicity and 
at the same time the curious felicity of his ideas 
and his language. 

Greeley's manner of getting through his work 
as the editor of a great daily newspaper amused 
and interested me much, it was so entirely unlike 
the methods of English journalism. The editor 
of a London daily newspaper lives in a sort of 
sanctuary, which is not to be approached without 
due notice and careful previous arrangement by 
any but his working colleagues. While Greeley 
was in the editorial room of the New York " Tri- 
bune," he was ready to see any one who called at 
the outer office and expressed a wish to say some- 
thing to him. One might, in fact, walk in unan- 
nounced, and if Greeley was at the moment en- 
gaged in throwing o£f a leading article he would 
get up from his unfinished work, hear what the 

152 



ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

stranger had to say, give him a reply, and then 
go on with his task as if nothing had intervened 
to put him out. Everybody knew Horace Greeley, 
and the very oddity of his ways made him all the 
more an object of interest. He was pointed out 
to the stranger visiting New York as one of the 
institutions, or perhaps I should say the curiosi- 
ties of New York, and all sorts of humorous 
stories were in circulation concerning his eccen- 
tricities, his dogmas, his likings and dislikings, 
and his frequent bursts of generosity. To the 
influences of society Horace Greeley was wholly 
indifferent. His likings and dislikings were purely 
personal or political, and had nothing to do with 
class or station. Although the most austere of 
teetotallers, he could enjoy a pleasant dinner or sup- 
per party if he liked the folks who were brought 
together, and however he may have condemned 
in his conscience what our poets once used to 
call the " flowing bowl," he could converse in the 
friendliest fashion with his friends even while they 
were doing full justice to the dryest of cham- 
pagne. There was one thing to be said about 
Horace Greeley, and that was that he did not 
recall to mind anybody else whom one had ever 
met ; and I think there was another thing to be 
said about him also, that it was impossible, after 
coming to know him, not to feel a sincere admira- 
tion for him. 

Another celebrated American public man whom 
153 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

I met for the first time in New York was Charles 
Sumner, so long distinguished as the great orator 
of negro emancipation. Sumner was not to be 
seen habitually in New York city, for he usually 
lived in Boston, the place of his birth, and when 
Congress was in session he was always to be 
found in or near the Senate Chamber in Wash- 
ington. But of course he often came to New 
York, and it was there that I first had an oppor- 
tunity of meeting him and forming a friendship 
with him. Charles Sumner was, I think, the most 
impressive figure so far as physical attributes 
were concerned among the public men of his time. 
He was very tall, was powerfully built, and had a 
handsome face. In stature and proportions he 
often reminded me of Bismarck; but Sumner was 
a very handsome man, which Bismarck certainly 
was not. I had brought him a letter of introduc- 
tion from John Bright. This in itself would have 
secured me a cordial reception from Sumner. 
The two men had alike advocated the cause of 
negro emancipation while that great reform had 
yet to be struggled for, and Bright had been a 
most powerful and eloquent champion during the 
American Civil War of that Northern cause to 
which Sumner on the other side of the Atlantic 
was devoting his best energies. I met Sumner 
many times in Boston and in Washington, and he 
was the first man who brought me into sight of 
the meetings of the Senate in the Capitol. 

154 



ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

I may mention appropriately here that on one 
occasion while the Senate was not actually sitting 
Sumner showed me the place where, many years 
before, he had been assaulted and struck down 
in the Senate Chamber by a Southerner, Pres- 
ton Brooks, because of a speech he had made 
denouncing slavery and its advocates. The as- 
sault created an immense sensation throughout 
the whole of the civilized world, but at the present 
moment it has probably passed out of the memory 
of many of my readers. I bring it up anew for 
an especial reason of my own. In my " Reminis- 
cences " I mention the fact that Sumner himself 
showed me the place where the attack was made 
on him — it was in the old Senate Chamber and 
not that at present in use. Until I had heard 
Sumner's own explanation, I could not understand 
how a man of his powerful build could have been 
stricken down by an attack, however sudden, from 
an assailant of ordinary physical strength. Sum- 
ner explained to me that the attack was made on 
him while he was alone in the chamber after the 
sitting had been concluded, and was seated at his 
desk writing letters. His knees were under this 
heavy solid desk, and when he endeavoured to 
spring to his feet he was kept down by the desk, 
and his enemy struck him blow after blow, until 
he fell senseless. 

I may quote the words in which I told the story 
of that assault : — 

^55 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

" Sumner had made in the Senate an attack on 
the advocates of that Southern policy which was 
destined to bring on, and by some was even de- 
signed to bring on, the Civil War. A member of 
the Southern party named Preston Brooks made 
a fierce attack on Sumner in the Senate house 
itself, struck him several blows on the head with 
a bludgeon, and left him lying senseless on the 
ground. The assailant received the applause of 
unthinking people in the Southern States, and 
was presented with a testimonial in the form of a 
gold-headed cane professing to come from certain 
Southern ladies in recognition of the manner in 
which he had advocated the cause of the South. 
Sumner was for a long time incapacitated from 
taking any part in public affairs by the injuries 
which he had received. His assailant offered him 
the satisfaction of a duel, but Sumner was on 
principle an uncompromising opponent of the 
duelling system, and indeed was an unqualified 
opponent of war, whether public or private, unless 
in the form of absolute self-defence." 

Some three years after the publication of my 
" Reminiscences," I received a letter from a South- 
ern lady, couched in language the most courteous 
to me, but urging that I had given an incorrect 
and misleading view of the conduct of Preston 
Brooks, and enclosing a letter from the son of 
Sumner's assailant which, according to her con- 

156 



ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

viction, gave an accurate and authentic account 
of the whole affair. It is only fair that I should 
quote the passages from the letter of Mr. Brooks, 
the son, which profess to give the correct version. 
Mr. Brooks says : " The fact is, my father waited 
until the Senate adjourned and all the ladies had 
left, and then went up to Mr. Sumner and told 
him he had read his speech as dispassionately as 
possible, and that, in consideration of the language 
he had used against his kinsmen, his State, and his 
country, he deemed it necessary to chastise him. 
Sumner did not try to resist it." Then the writer 
says that the weapon Preston Brooks used was 
not a bludgeon, but a light cane, which he, the 
writer, has seen many times. " It is a small gutta- 
percha cane, hollow from end to end, and running 
to a point, not thicker than a lady's little finger, 
and being so frail it broke after a lick or two. 
He never hit Sumner with the large end, but 
used it as he would have used a cow-hide." Then 
Mr. Brooks goes on to justify the assault be- 
cause of the vehement attack which Sumner had 
made upon the Southern States and their sys- 
tems, but into this question it is not necessary 
for me to go. The point of the contradiction 
consists in the statement that Preston Brooks 
did not use a bludgeon or a heavy weapon of 
any kind, but merely a light gutta-percha cane, 
and on this question I am willing to give to the 
memory of Preston Brooks the full benefit of the 

157 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

doubt. I took my description of the scene and 
the weapon from what I had read in books and 
newspapers, and it appears to be, at all events, 
quite certain that Sumner was for a considerable 
time prevented from taking any part in public 
affairs by the effect of the injuries which he had 
received. None the less, I am perfectly willing to 
take this the first effective opportunity I have 
had to give to the public that version of the 
story which is vouched for by the son of Preston 
Brooks. What is certain is that there was an 
assault, and that the assault was severe enough 
to reduce to insensibility a man of herculean stat- 
ure and strength. The whole incident of course 
is one which seems very shocking to human feel- 
ings now, whether these feelings belong to Euro- 
peans or Americans, but when we remember a 
certain encounter of fisticuffs which took place in 
the House of Commons in 1893, we in England 
ought perhaps to be somewhat restrained in our 
expressions of horror and disgust at the idea of 
an assault taking place in a legislative chamber. 
It has to be remembered, at all events, that the 
business of the sitting had come to a close before 
the assault on Charles Sumner was committed, 
whereas the House of Commons, on the occasion 
to which I refer, was in the midst of its parlia- 
mentary work when the free fight broke out. 

Charles Sumner was one of the great orators 
whom it has been my good fortune to hear. I do 

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ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

not reckon him as amongst the very greatest of 
these, for I do not think he had the noble and 
majestic simplicity, the poetic feeling, and the 
exquisitely melodious voice of John Bright, and 
I do not think he sounded the various notes of 
human feeling with the rapid and unfailing touch 
which was the characteristic of Gladstone. I shall 
also have to say presently that there was another 
distinguished American orator who commanded 
my admiration more completely than Sumner 
could do. But Sumner must, according to my judg- 
ment, take rank unquestionably among great ora- 
tors as distinguished from great declaimers or 
great debaters. He was a man of deep and varied 
studies, historical, legal, and literary. He had, 
during his earlier life, travelled much in Europe, 
had indeed spent some years there as a student, 
and he was well acquainted with England. He 
had been called to the Bar, but very soon gave up 
all idea of practising and devoted himself to the 
more congenial work of political reform. He was 
more profoundly read in English history than 
almost any Englishman with whom I have con- 
versed on such subjects, and I remember that in 
some instances he pointed out what he declared 
to be errors in our recognised works on English 
history, and he was able to refer me to authentic 
and state-preserved evidence of which I had known 
nothing before — evidence which absolutely estab- 
lished the justice of his criticism. He loved the 

159 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

great literature of England and was thoroughly 
familiar with its noblest productions, whether of 
early days or later. During all the earlier part of 
his career Sumner had an intense love for every- 
thing in England, — everything at least which he 
regarded as characteristically English, — the scen- 
ery of the land, its historic memories, its poetry, 
and its prose. The abolition of slavery in England 
and English colonies through the efforts of British 
philanthropy established a new claim on his sym- 
pathies and his admiration, and he might be said 
to have taken for his creed on that subject the 
doctrines expounded and brought into legislation 
by such Englishmen as Wilberforce. But at the 
time when I came to know Charles Sumner his 
feelings towards the mother country had under- 
gone a severe change. He could not but see that 
throughout the whole of the struggle in the United 
States between North and South, the sympathies 
of the great majority belonging to "society" in 
England had gone with the Southerners, who 
broke into rebellion with the hope of maintaining 
slavery. His old love for England was profoundly 
shaken by the disappointment thus brought upon 
him, and changed at last into something like a 
feeling of hatred. I had many conversations with 
him on this subject, and while I thoroughly agreed 
with him in condemning the sentiment and the 
policy of the ruling classes in England with regard 
to the Civil War, I did my best to explain that on 

i6o 



ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

slavery, as on so many other questions, the ruling 
classes did not represent the feelings of the ma- 
jority of Englishmen. I pointed out to him that 
the greatest leaders of thought in England, the 
best writers and the best speakers, the leaders of 
the English democracy, and the whole mass of 
the English workingmen, had remained constant 
to anti-slavery principles, and gave their best wishes 
for the success of the Northern cause. I dwelt 
upon the fact that men like Cobden and Bright, 
John Stuart Mill and Goldwin Smith, had held 
firmly to their convictions, and that these men 
were rewarded by the love and admiration of all 
but a small and circumscribed minority of English- 
men everywhere. He listened to all my arguments 
with unvarying patience and good temper, and 
fully admitted the force of the facts I brought to 
his notice ; but he still insisted that those whom 
the English people had made their ofhcial repre- 
sentatives were for the most part sympathisers 
and avowed sympathisers with the Southern States, 
and were willing that slavery should abide forever 
in America, rather than see the defeat of the 
Southern gentlemen by the Northern traders. It 
seemed to me as if the very intensity of his former 
love for England only served to make the bitter- 
ness of his disappointment turn into something 
like a deceived lover's hatred for the former object 
of his adoration. I thought him unreasonable, but 
I could not fail to understand the inner meaning 

i6i 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

of his sentiments, and I felt that every allowance 
must be made for the sudden change which had 
come over his feelings towards the old country. 

Another great anti-slavery advocate whom I met 
for the first time in New York was Wendell 
Phillips. I afterwards met him very often in Bos- 
ton, the city of his birth. Wendell Phillips was 
for many years the most distinguished and effec- 
tive among abolitionist orators. He was a man of 
high culture and refined tastes, and the sincerity 
of his devotion to every great cause he advocated 
became with him a positive passion. He would 
hear of no compromise ; he could make no allow- 
ance for the early training, the prejudices, and the 
sincere although perverse convictions of his oppo- 
nents. He was as unconditional a champion of total 
abstinence from alcoholic drinks as he was of negro 
emancipation, and he could hold no parley with 
any proposal for lowering his standard in either 
cause. Unlike Horace Greeley, who was also a 
convinced teetotaller, Wendell Phillips would not 
consent to make one of any social gathering 
where wine or spirits or beer came on the table. 
This resolve was all the more regretted by his 
friends inasmuch as he was the most delightful 
companion and a fascinating talker. He was an 
advocate of universal peace, and I think that in 
this doctrine he went much farther than Cobden 
or Bright would have done ; for he had little sym- 
pathy with a policy of war even when that policy 

162 



ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

might have been plausibly vindicated as a mere 
necessity of self-defence. I heard him once de- 
clare in a speech of thrilling eloquence that the 
reign of the Anglo-Saxon, in which description 
he included his own Americans, had been for the 
most part little better than " a drunken revel of 
blood." 

I have always regarded Wendell Phillips as one 
of the greatest orators I ever heard, and I should 
rank him as a public speaker with Bright and 
Gladstone. He seemed to me to have a fluency 
equal to Gladstone's, and at the same time a sim- 
plicity of diction which might well be compared 
with that leading quality in the eloquence of 
Bright. Wendell Phillips had two distinct fields 
for the display of his powers as a speaker. He was 
universally acknowledged to be the most popular 
lecturer of his time, and then, as since, the lecturer 
had a sway over audiences in the United States 
such as he can hardly be said to have ever held in 
England. Wendell Phillips lectured on all man- 
ner of topics, — literature, politics, travel, social life 
and morals, — and he could always suit his style 
and his manner to the nature of his subject and the 
capacity of his audience. His lectures might gen- 
erally be described as easy, colloquial and yet bril- 
liant talk, put into the simplest and easiest form 
of words, and yet thrilling in every sentence with 
a force and fervour which kept his listeners in 
breathless attention. But when he spoke from a 

163 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

public platform to a vast crowd on some great po- 
litical subject, he then became the genuine orator, 
and his impassioned sentences swept like electric 
fire over the assembly he had gathered around 
him. Even on such occasions, however, the great 
speaker never sacrificed any of the pure simplicity 
belonging to his natural style. He may have in- 
dulged not uncommonly in extravagance of eulogy 
or extravagance of condemnation, but there was 
nothing hyperbolical in the language which 
clothed his eulogy or his censure. His voice was 
remarkably powerful and was at the same time sin- 
gularly melodious in its tone, and yet he never 
seemed, even when addressing the most crowded 
assembly, to be putting any strain upon his lungs 
or making an unusual effort. One who had only 
heard him deliver lectures might never have known 
what strength and volume belonged to that voice 
which could upon ordinary occasions and when 
speaking from the platform of some literary asso- 
ciation discourse with such charming simplicity 
and with such exquisite ease of modulation. 

I had heard Wendell Phillips deliver several 
lectures before I had an opportunity of listening 
to him as a great orator addressing a large and 
tumultuous meeting. The first time I heard him 
deliver a speech of this kind was at a vast meet- 
ing held in the Cooper Institute, New York. It 
was a meeting at which several other speakers as 
well as Wendell Phillips were to be heard. The 

164 



ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

hall was crowded to excess, and I happened to be 
a little late in my arrival, so that I was not able to 
get any further than the steps of one of the open- 
ings into the room, and I could not see the speak- 
ers or even the platform. The speaker addressing 
the meeting at the time of my arrival spoke with 
what appeared to me to be one of the finest and 
most powerful voices I had ever heard. It never 
occurred to me for the moment that the owner of 
this superb voice was no other than Wendell Phil- 
lips himself. Such, however, proved to be the fact, 
and it was my first experience of the difference in 
voice between Wendell Phillips the lecturer and 
Wendell Phillips the orator. Not often do we find 
in public life a man who can win success both as 
a lecturer and as a political orator, but Wendell 
Phillips was equally a power on one platform and 
the other. I have never known a man more thor- 
oughly unselfish and more absolutely devoted to a 
great cause. He never sought any personal advan- 
tage or distinction. He refused to enter into what 
we call the game of politics, and never put himself 
in the way of obtaining any of the administrative 
offices which are the prize of the politician in 
America, in England, and in most other countries. 
He was a man of considerable private fortune, and 
made much money by his lectures, but he devoted 
the best part of his worldly possessions with lavish 
hand to the promotion of the great philanthropic 
cause he had at heart. It was a high privilege to 

165 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

know such a man, and I must ever remember 
with pride that he treated me as a friend. 

William Lloyd Garrison, another famous leader 
of the movement for the abolition of slavery, also 
became known to me for the first time in New 
York. Garrison had not anything like the elo- 
quence of Wendell Phillips, or his literary cul- 
ture, but he brought to the cause he advocated 
an indomitable resolve and a powerful capacity 
for commanding attention. He had risked his life 
again and again at a time and in places when the 
denunciation of the slavery system surrounded 
him with reckless and pitiless enemies. He had 
been prosecuted and imprisoned for writings and 
speeches assailing the party which was then most 
powerful in the United States, he had been threat- 
ened with assassination, and, even in Boston, he 
had been subjected to personal violence ; but no 
threats and no dangers could ever turn him from 
his self-appointed task. He visited Great Britain 
several times, and won hosts of admirers and sup- 
porters there. During his last stay in London he 
was entertained at a great public banquet, where 
many of the most eminent Englishmen of the 
time were present. I am now, however, only think- 
ing of him as I knew him in the United States, 
when the work which he had helped so materially 
had accomplished its full success, and the one 
great purpose of his life had become by its accom- 
plishment his highest and most treasured reward. 

1 66 



ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

Among the distinguished men whom I met dur- 
ing my first visit to New York was George Wil- 
liam Curtis, the author, journalist, and lecturer — 
one of the most charming writers and fascinating 
speakers then in the United States. Curtis ranked 
among the most successful literary lecturers of that 
time, and I never missed an opportunity of hearing 
him whenever I had the chance. I shall never for- 
get the manner in which during one of his lec- 
tures he quoted that touching and noble lyric by 
Arthur Hugh Clough, " Green Fields of England." 
I thought at the time that any Englishman, how- 
ever proud and fond of his country's associations 
and scenery, must have found a new thrill of patri- 
otic feeling pass through him and a new inspira- 
tion given to him by listening to those lines as they 
came with such exquisite music and modulation 
from the lips of an American. I had many oppor- 
tunities of meeting and conversing with Curtis 
during my first stay in New York and afterwards, 
and I never met him without feeling all the better 
and the brighter for his thoughts and his expres- 
sions. 

Another American friend was Bayard Taylor, 
the poet, novelist, and traveller. Bayard Taylor 
was among the first of the distinguished travellers 
who devoted themselves to the task, not of mere 
exploration, but of the literary and poetic illumi- 
nation of far-off foreign scenes. He had a pas- 
sion for travel, and was able to indulge himself in 

167 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

his favourite pastime by the descriptive sketches 
which he sent home to American newspapers and 
magazines. He paid his way after this fashion, 
and it may fairly be said of him that the traveller 
touched no subject which he did not adorn. He 
wandered over many regions in Asia and Africa, 
some of which have been made more familiar to the 
world since his time by other travellers, but which 
were almost unknown to Europe and America 
until Bayard Taylor had found his way into them 
and described what he had seen. Bayard Taylor 
wrote many volumes of poetry, as well as novels 
and books of travel, and he made what I believe 
to be the first complete translation into English of 
Goethe's " Faust." Up to the publication of that 
volume the English reader, if unacquainted with 
German, had to be content with that first part 
of the poem which ends in the fate of Gretchen. 
Bayard Taylor, like every true lover of Goethe, 
regarded such a way of dealing with " Faust " as 
absolutely misleading and even intolerable, spoil- 
ing the whole narrative and purpose of the im- 
mortal drama. He was greatly devoted to German 
literature, and I remember having had many lively 
disputes with him as to the merits of some of the 
modern German poets. There were poems of 
Freiligrath, for instance, which he greatly dispar- 
aged, and which I warmly admired, and over these 
we had occasionally lively interchange of argu- 
ment. But we were thoroughly agreed in our 

i68 



ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

estimate of the great classic German poets, and 
in the conviction that " Faust " can no more be 
appreciated by reading what is called its first part 
than " Macbeth " could be appreciated if we were 
to read no more of it after Duncan had been done 
to death. 

Let it be remembered that with all his work 
as a world-traveller, a writer of poems, a writer of 
novels, and a translator. Bayard Taylor kept up 
his regular and continuous labour as a journalist. 
I have seldom met with any one who compressed 
so much variety of work, and most of it brilliant 
work, into the compass of a life which yet found 
ample time for healthful exercise and for amuse- 
ment. Such English books as I had read at home 
about life in American cities did not prepare me 
for a man like Bayard Taylor. Nor did the de- 
scriptions I had found of American journalists in 
one at least of Charles Dickens's novels, and in 
other novels by English writers who tried to catch 
the spirit of Dickens, lead me to expect that I 
should find among professional writers for the 
press in New York such a man as Whitelaw Reid, 
who was one of my earliest acquaintances in the 
United States. 

When I first came to New York, Whitelaw Reid 
had but lately settled in the city, and was attached 
to the literary staff of Horace Greeley's " Tribune." 
Whitelaw Reid had come to New York from Cin- 
cinnati, if I remember rightly, and had obtained 

169 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

an engagement from Horace Greeley, who was 
quick to appreciate the varied talents of the young 
man. Whitelaw Reid was then but a young man, 
and was just opening his brilliant career in jour- 
nalism. He was a singularly handsome man, 
charming in his manners and in his conversation. 
He soon proved himself master of a literary style 
which won for him a high reputation all over the 
United States. I had met him very often during 
my first visit to America, and at each of my later 
visits I felt an increasing personal pleasure in hear- 
ing of the success he had steadily won and had 
well deserved. His name has since become known 
all over the civilised world. After the death of 
Horace Greeley he succeeded to the position of 
chief editor of the " Tribune," and, as often hap- 
pens in the United States, his splendid services as 
a journalist won for him an opportunity for which 
he had never sought — the opportunity of holding 
one of the highest positions in diplomacy. White- 
law Reid represented for a long time the United 
States Government in the capital of the French 
Republic. Since that time he has twice been special 
envoy to the British Court on important occasions, 
and in both instances he won the confidence and 
the admiration of all who had the opportunity of 
observing the manner in which he discharged his 
duties. If an English comic writer who had drawn 
his ideas of American life from " Martin Chuzzle- 
wit," for instance, were to evolve from his moral 

170 



ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

consciousness the idea of a successful American 
journalist, he would have pictured a man as strik- 
ingly unlike Whitelaw Reid in every quality and 
feature as it is possible to imagine. Whitelaw 
Reid is a man of high culture and varied ability, 
of refined and polished manners, a political writer 
of great power and penetration, a man ta be wel- 
comed by scholars and diplomatists. I was in- 
debted to him for many kindnesses while I was 
in New York, and I cannot perhaps express more 
emphatically the high opinion I had formed of 
him from the first than when I say that his later 
success in journalism and in diplomacy brought 
no feeling of surprise to me. 



171 



CHAPTER X 

MY LIFE IN AMERICA 

Meanwhile I was settling down into something 
like regular work in literature and journalism. I 
had been welcomed to a place in the editorial 
rooms of the New York " Independent," and I at- 
tended there for several days in each week, wrote 
articles on the political affairs of England, and 
gave my advice and suggestions on various sub- 
jects of European interest. I shall always have 
the most pleasing recollections of my association 
with " The Independent," and even at the present 
time I am a contributor to its pages. Charles 
Sumner was a frequent visitor to the editorial 
rooms, because the paper represented on all or 
almost all important questions the opinions he 
had ever advocated. I contributed several leading 
articles to the New York " Tribune," and I came 
into friendly relations with the leading members 
of the firm of Harper & Brothers, a firm which 
then as now were the publishers of several maga- 
zines and weekly periodicals. I had sent on chance 
a short story to one of the Harper magazines. 
The story made its appearance in due course, 
and procured for me a friendly invitation to pre- 

172 



MY LIFE IN AMERICA 

sent myself at the office of the magazine. I have 
already said that one of my novels came out as a 
serial in " Harper's Monthly." I had a very plea- 
sant talk with the leading member of the firm, and 
he suggested that I should enter into an agree- 
ment with him to write a number of short stories, 
to be printed in some of his many publications. 
The invitation was very acceptable to me, as I had 
already been paid well for the one short story I 
had sent in, and I asked how many stories of the 
same kind he wished me to write. I was some- 
what astonished, and still more gratified, when he 
told me that he should like me to send him, at all 
events, a hundred stories of the same order. I 
hope I retained a perfect composure when I re- 
ceived this astonishing invitation, and conducted 
myself as if it were but an ordinary event in the 
course of my literary life. So we agreed that one 
hundred short stories were to be expected from 
me, and that I might work them off according as 
it suited my convenience. The offer was particu- 
larly welcome to me just then, because I had made 
up my mind to travel through the United States 
as much as possible, and I saw the great advan- 
tage of being able to pay a good part of my travel- 
ling expenses by my casual contributions to the 
Harper periodicals. 

In course of time I completed my contract, and 
sent in stories to the Harpers from resting-places 
in the United States as widely distant from each 

173 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

other as New York and San Francisco, Minne- 
apolis and New Orleans. Whenever, during my 
journeyings, I stayed for a few days in any place, 
I found time to get through a short story and 
send it to the publishers in New York. Many of 
my tales and sketches were done in England after 
my return there from my first and second visits to 
the United States, but I may say that I completed 
my appointed task in due time, and I have ever 
since been in the most friendly relations with the 
firm of Harper & Brothers, who have given to the 
American public many of my novels and historical 
works. 

I was anxious to become, during my stay in 
America, as well acquainted as possible with the 
life and ways of the United States, and I made my 
appearance on many political and literary plat- 
forms when some question was under discussion 
on which a visitor from England might be entitled 
to form and express an opinion. In one instance 
I went so far as to deliver a lecture in the Cooper 
Institute, New York, on the manner in which 
public opinion throughout England had mani- 
fested itself during the American Civil War. 
There was, at that time, much bitterness still pre- 
vailing in the Northern States because of the 
manner in which England was believed to have 
acted during that struggle. The people of the 
Northern States had been compelled to see that 
the English Government had not shown itself very 

174 



MY LIFE IN AMERICA 

friendly to the cause of the Union ; that for a 
considerable time cruisers had been built in Eng- 
lish ports for the Confederates, and allowed to go 
to sea for the purpose of preying on the mer- 
chant shipping of the North ; and that most of the 
London newspapers were active champions of the 
Southern rebels. The impression went abroad 
throughout the Northern States that the English 
people as a whole were hostile to the maintenance 
of the Union, and this was exactly the impression 
I wished, if possible, to remove. I delivered my 
lecture to a crowded audience, at which many 
of the leading citizens of New York were present, 
and I made it my purpose to show that audience, 
as I had tried to show Charles Sumner, that the 
great majority of the English people were from 
first to last in full sympathy with the cause of the 
Union and with the anti-slavery movement ; that 
the working classes everywhere held the same 
views ; that the most intellectual and highly edu- 
cated Englishmen, such as John Stuart Mill and 
Herbert Spencer, were earnest and consistent 
supporters of the Northern cause, and that some 
of the most popular and influential orators and 
statesmen in England — Cobden and Bright, for 
instance — were on the same side, and that Eng- 
lish public opinion could not be regarded as fairly 
represented in any sense by the men in political 
office and by the classes who form " society." I 
explained to my audience that the very same lead- 

175 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

ers of administration, and of political and social 
cliques, who were hostile to the cause of the North 
were equally hostile to every measure for the polit- 
ical emancipation of the working classes in Great 
Britain and Ireland. The cause for which I was 
pleading was that of the great majority of Eng- 
lishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen, who up to that 
time were allowed no constitutional means of giv- 
ing force to their opinions on questions of public 
interest. 

I felt a reasonable hope that my endeavour to 
render justice to the great majority of the English 
people would come with all the more effect from 
me because it was well known to my American 
audience that I was a devoted Nationalist in the 
cause of Ireland, and could not be suspected of 
having any extravagant admiration for England 
as the ruling power of my country. I have reason 
to believe that the lecture accomplished to some 
extent, at least, the purpose I had in view, and 
induced many among my audience to understand 
that the action of an English administration could 
not at that time always be regarded as represent- 
ing the general opinions of the English people. 
One result of this my first discourse from a public 
platform in America was that it procured for me 
a number of invitations to deliver lectures on other 
subjects, in other cities, and during my second 
winter in the United States I delivered a large 
number of lectures on various topics in different 

176 



MY LIFE IN AMERICA 

cities and towns. At a later period I delivered 
lectures during the whole of two successive sea- 
sons in many parts of the United States, and thus 
obtained very instructive and gratifying oppor- 
tunities of making myself better acquainted with 
America, its scenery, and its audiences. In the 
mean time I was working at a novel, chiefly de- 
scriptive of American life in the Atlantic States 
and in San Francisco, which appeared as a serial 
in " The Galaxy." Although the novel appeared 
in an English edition, I afterwards withdrew it 
from circulation, for the reason chiefly that it 
seemed to me neither quite a story nor quite a 
book of travel, but only an unsatisfactory attempt 
at a combination of the two. 

During this first visit of mine to the United 
States I did a good deal of travelling, and enjoyed 
it much. One of my expeditions took me to Salt 
Lake City, where Brigham Young then presided 
as prophet and ruler over the Mormon community. 
At that time there was no branch line connecting 
the Mormon city with the great Pacific Railway, 
then not long opened, and we had to make a con- 
siderable journey by stage-coach from the nearest 
station on the line to our resting-place b>K the 
shore of the great Salt Lake. We interrupted our 
journeys, whether by rail or road, at every avail- 
able halting-place, partly to avoid the fatigue of 
a long continuous journey and partly because we 
thus secured all the better chance of making our- 

177 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

selves acquainted with the regions through which 
we were passing. We made a considerable stay 
in Salt Lake City, where I formed the acquaint- 
ance of Brigham Young ; but as I have said a good 
deal about our experiences of the place and the 
people in other books of mine, I shall not repeat 
my descriptions here. Up to this time I had not 
entered upon engagements as a public lecturer, 
and therefore our goings and comings were regu- 
lated solely by our own ideas as to the places we 
ought to visit. I kept up all the time my work 
as a writer of short stories for the Harpers, and 
as a contributor to " The Independent " and " The 
Galaxy." 

In 1870 I made a flying visit to England, and 
arrived there just in time to become absorbed in 
the interest created in the outbreak of the great 
war between France and Prussia, which ended in 
the fall of the French Empire and of Louis Napo- 
leon. During my comparatively short stay in Lon- 
don at this exciting time I began my connection 
with the " Daily News " as a writer of leading arti- 
cles, a connection which lasted with little inter- 
ruption for more than quarter of a century. The 
editor of the " Daily News " at the time when I 
joined the literary staff was Mr. Frank Harrison 
Hill, whom I then met for the first time, and who 
is one of my dearest friends at the present day. 
Frank Harrison Hill is one of the most brilliant 
political writers of his time. His volume entitled 

178 



MY LIFE IN AMERICA 

" Political Portraits," and his masterly satire " The 
Political Adventures of Lord Beaconsfield," would 
of themselves entitle him to a place in the front 
rank of high-cultured, keen, and animated essay- 
ists. Hill had only just become editor-in-chief of 
the " Daily News " at that time, and I suppose, 
like most editors, he was anxious to bring some 
new contributors to the work of the journal, and 
therefore invited me to become a writer of leading 
articles. I accepted the invitation very gladly, with 
the understanding that it was not to interfere with 
my coming visit to the United States. I found 
my old friend and former newspaper colleague, 
William Black, a member of the " Daily News " 
editorial staff, and before very long another of my 
former colleagues, Richard Whiteing, was one of 
my fellow-workers. 

The business manager of the " Daily News " 
was the late John R. Robinson, who was more re- 
cently known as Sir John R. Robinson, but who 
had not obtained any recognition of his valuable 
public services at the time when I first came to know 
him. J. R. Robinson always seemed to me the very 
ideal of a successful newspaper manager. He had a 
marvellous eye for the discovery of new regions 
in which the Special Correspondent could arouse 
the attention of the world, and he had a wonder- 
ful faculty for discerning in men the qualities 
which make successful War Correspondents. He 
gave Archibald Forbes, one of the most renowned 

179 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

among the masters of that craft, the first opportu- 
nity of proving his marvellous capacity. One of 
the contributors to the " Daily News " at that time 
was Mr. Edward F. S. Pigott, who afterwards held 
the official position of Examiner of Plays, and who 
was one of the most accomplished and well-read 
men and one of the brightest talkers I have ever 
known. My friendship with Pigott lasted until his 
too early death. A distinguished Frenchman once 
told me that the late Lord Granville and Edward 
Pigott were the only two Englishmen he knew 
who could talk French so well as to be taken in 
Paris for Frenchmen. Edward Pigott was a great 
friend of George Eliot, and of her first husband, 
George Henry Lewes, and it was through him 
that I came to know that gifted pair, and to be 
a frequent visitor at George Eliot's Sunday after- 
noon receptions in their home, The Priory, Re- 
gent's Park. 

I wrote many leading articles for the " Daily 
News " during my short visit to London, chiefly 
on the subject of the war then going on between 
France and Prussia. The " Daily News " did not 
pledge itself to any actual partisanship in the great 
struggle between these rival powers — rival powers 
of whom Prevost-Paradol, the distinguished French 
diplomatist, had already said with such apt expres- 
sion that they were like two express trains started 
at the same moment from either end of the same 
railway line, and destined therefore to come into 

1 80 



MY LIFE IN AMERICA 

collision. The more general impression in Eng- 
land at first was that France would be the con- 
queror, but the " Daily News " judged differently, 
and maintained from the beginning that the supe- 
rior military strength and preparation and the 
greater political force were on the side of Prussia. 
The war was still going on, and was not indeed 
very far on its way, when my time had arrived for 
returning to the United States. I left England in 
October, 1870, and returned to my old quarters in 
New York. 

During both my visits to America I naturally 
went very often to Boston. I made the acquaint- 
ance there of that group of distinguished men 
whose writings shed such a lustre over the Mas- 
sachusetts capital. Emerson was the first man 
who showed me over all the places of historic 
interest in Boston, and I was invited to stay with 
Longfellow and with Lowell at their homes in 
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I had repeated 
opportunities of enjoying the delightful compan- 
ionship of Oliver Wendell Holmes. I have written 
so much, however, about those happy Boston days 
in another book of mine that I must not allow 
myself to be tempted into any further discourse 
about the men and the women with whom I was 
then brought into association, and who must al- 
ways live in my memory. 

During my first and second visits to the States 
I spent much of my spare time at the home of my 

181 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

brother Frank. He and his wife and children 
lived then in a quaint old-fashioned stone-built 
house in New Jersey, near to the railway station 
at Bayonne, a few miles from New York city. It 
was a lonely and out-of-the-way place then, but 
it has probably become a very crowded region 
in later days. My brother loved it because it was 
so much out of the way and so lonely, or com- 
paratively lonely, for a place within easy reach 
of New York, and because it was near New York 
Bay, and had some picturesque woods still flour- 
ishing around it. He was cultivating, as closely 
as his other work allowed him, his taste for paint- 
ing, and there seemed then every reason to believe 
that he was destined to come to a genuine success 
in his paintings of American scenery. His wife 
was and is a gifted and charming woman, with a 
turn for literary work, and she had then her family 
of children around her. I have often thought that 
the days which I passed at their home were among 
the very happiest days of my life. After so many 
years of parting from Frank, it was such an ex- 
quisite delight for me to be with him again, to 
see him and his wife and family and my wife and 
mine all domiciled in the same home — and a 
very picturesque home it was. Our evenings spent 
together in his house, and our walks together in 
the woods and beside the sea, often seemed to me 
like the realisation of some dreamland happiness. 
My brother did not live long enough to accom- 

182 



MY LIFE IN AMERICA 

plish that success in his art for which we all be- 
lieved that we had good reason to hope. He had, 
as I said, to give up most of his time to the ever 
present and unavoidable work of maintaining his 
family by his business occupation. I never saw 
him after the close of my second visit to America, 
but my sister-in-law and I had many loving meet- 
ings later on, although not in the same old home, 
and we interchange frequent letters up to the pre- 
sent day. The mere thought of her brings back 
with a rush the memory of those early times near 
dear old Bayonne. 

During my first and second visits to the New 
World I travelled a good deal through Canada. 
With my second visit began my regular work as 
a lecturer. I generally found a subject for my lec- 
tures in some event just going on in Europe : the 
publication, perhaps, of some remarkable new book, 
the uprising of some important literary or artistic 
controversy, or the character and genius of some 
illustrious public man. The work was very fatigu- 
ing when the travel was incessant, but it had its 
distinct advantages. It brought me in some money, 
and thus enabled me, when the lecturing season 
was over, to take a complete rest, or to travel when 
and whither I felt inclined. Then, again, the mere 
work of lecturing was all the more easy for me 
because, as I have already said, I never could pre- 
pare a discourse ; and as I only spoke on subjects 
with which I was tolerably well acquainted, I had 

183 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

but to mount the platform and express my opin- 
ions as well as I could. The time thus spent was 
for all its fatigues full of interest and enjoyment 
to me, because it enabled me to become for the 
hour something better than a' mere stranger and 
an outside observer in each place which I visited. 
I had always felt strongly drawn towards the 
United States and its people, partly because of 
America's splendid irruption into history, and 
partly because it had been for so long a time the 
chosen home of every Irishman suffering from 
unjust laws and disheartening conditions in his 
native land, and partly, too, because there was 
much in American literature of the higher order, 
in the writings of men like Emerson and Haw- 
thorne, Longfellow and Wendell Holmes, and 
that man of strange, eccentric genius, Edgar Allan 
Poe, which had from my very boyhood appealed 
to my mind and heart. In the south of Ireland 
we took to these American writers with intense 
interest, and in the social groups with which I 
was familiar while still living in Cork city the 
writings of Emerson, the poems of Longfellow, 
and the '* Raven " of Edgar Poe were as well 
known as the works of Scott, or Byron, or Moore. 
Then, again, there was the fact that my brother 
had settled in America, and that when I crossed 
the Atlantic he and I were the sole survivors of 
the family which had had its home in Cork. 

I never felt therefore in America anything like 
184 



MY LIFE IN AMERICA 

the sense of strangeness which one naturally feels 
in a foreign country. It did not seem foreign to 
me. Everywhere I went, I met some Irish men and 
women whom I had known in the old country, 
and who did not regard themselves as foreigners 
in America, but were heart and soul in sympathy 
with its institutions, its people, and its progress. 
For a time I even regarded it as an open ques- 
tion whether I should or should not follow the 
example of my brother and make my home in 
the United States, and this consideration in itself 
made me feel a quicker and a deeper interest in 
every illustration of American life and growth. 
It appeared to me just then as if a Nationalist 
Irishman might render better service to his coun- 
try in the United States than it would be possible 
for him to do in Ireland. About this time things 
were looking singularly unhopeful for the Irish- 
man whose heart and mind were devoted to the 
cause of his country's legislative independence. 
The rebellion of 1848 and its failure had been 
followed by a long period of deep depression 
throughout the island, and by an immense flood 
of emigration to the United States and Canada. 
The Irish Nationalist members of the House of 
Commons, among whom were many able and sin- 
cere men like Sir Charles Gavan Duffy and John 
Francis Maguire, had devoted themselves mainly 
to a patient endeavour at a reform in the system 
of Irish land tenure, but the agitation for Home 

185 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

Rule had not yet taken shape. Then came the 
abortive rising which sprang from the Fenian 
movement in 1867, and again for a while a season 
of inaction and depression set in. 

In 1 87 1, however, a distinct Home Rule organ- 
isation began to form itself through Ireland, and 
to send its representatives to the House of Com- 
mons. The recognised Parliamentary leader of 
this movement was Isaac Butt, the brilliant advo- 
cate who had taken part in the defence of Smith 
O'Brien and Meagher at the special commission 
in Clonmel after the failure of the 1848 movement. 
Butt had been for a great part of his life a Con- 
servative in politics, but he had gradually come 
round to see that nothing short of domestic self- 
government could satisfy the national aspirations 
of the Irish people, or could secure anything like 
permanent peace and growing prosperity to the 
island of his birth. Butt was a man of great po- 
litical capacity and a brilliant debater, although 
he did not show himself quite strong enough for 
the important position he had come to occupy. 
Still, it was evident that a new chapter of history 
was about to open for Ireland, and that a political 
agitation had begun which had set before itself 
a clearly defined and practicable end. A new ray 
of hope seemed to me to shine before my coun- 
try. What I had seen of the Young Ireland rising, 
what I had read and heard about the Fenian 
rising, had convinced me that the forces of the 

186 



MY LIFE IN AMERICA 

ruling power were far too strong to allow even 
the faintest chance of success to any attempt at 
an armed rebellion in Ireland. I believed also 
that if the whole of my countrymen could unite in 
maintaining a patient and persistent Parliamen- 
tary movement for the restoration to Ireland of 
her native Parliament, the heart and reason of 
thoughtful and fair-minded Englishmen might be 
won over to recognise the justice of the national 
demand. I then felt assured, as I still feel as- 
sured, that if Ireland's national Parliament were 
restored to her, there would be no reason why 
she should not remain a contented and prospering 
partner in the British Imperial system. At the 
time it seemed to me that Butt was a man well 
qualified to lead such a movement, and that a 
new and brighter era was setting in for the Irish 
national cause. 

I began now to think that a period was com- 
ing when an Irishman devoted to the maintenance 
of Ireland's national claims could probably serve 
his country better in London than in New York. 
The restoration of Ireland's domestic Parliament 
would have to be accomplished in the British 
legislature, and although I had not then any idea 
of endeavouring to find a seat in the House of 
Commons, I was coming to the conclusion that 
I might render better service to the cause as a 
writer and a speaker in England than I could 
possibly do in the United States. I received 

187 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

many kindly and pressing invitations to remain 
in America and to continue my connection with 
literature and journalism there, and the invitations 
had much to recommend them and seemed to 
promise a satisfactory career. I remember that 
one warm-hearted American friend offered to pre- 
sent me with a new house and a large piece of 
ground in the near neighbourhood of tsfew York, 
as a gift to me and my heirs forever, if I would 
settle down there and become a naturalised citi- 
zen of the United States. My mind, however, soon 
became made up, and my decision had the full 
sympathy and approval of those most closely inter- 
ested in my future. So I gave up the idea of 
becoming an American citizen, and returned to 
London in 187 1. 



188 



CHAPTER XI 

BACK TO LONDON 

When I settled down again in London, the war 
between France and Prussia had come to an end, 
the Empire had fallen, and Louis Napoleon was 
once more an exile in England. A new Republic 
had arisen, and its representative chambers were 
established at Versailles. The outbreak of the 
Commune insurrection had blazed over Paris and 
had at last been suppressed after much slaughter, 
and Thiers was President of the new Republic. 
I was naturally very anxious to see what Paris 
looked like after the tempestuous events which 
had come to pass since my latest visit to the dearly 
loved French capital. I made arrangements to go 
and have a look at the old familiar places, and to 
listen to some of the debates in Versailles. I was 
all the more impelled to visit Paris by my know- 
ledge of the fact that my dear old friend Louis 
Blanc had returned to his native land, and had 
been elected a member of the National Assembly. 
I felt sure. that I should have in him a most valu- 
able guide to a just appreciation of the new state 
of affairs. I went over to Paris and spent there 
an intensely interesting time. Everything had 

189 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

changed in the comparatively short period since 
I had last looked on the familiar streets of the 
beautiful city. The Tuileries was a heap of ruins, 
and so were most of the Courts of Justice. The 
signs of the wreck and ruin created by the Com- 
mune were everywhere visible around Paris, every- 
where were the concrete evidences of the recent 
military operations, and the whole place had just 
the aspect one might naturally expect to see in 
a city lately taken by storm. The Hotel Louvre, 
where I had been in the habit of staying during 
my former visits to Paris, was turned for the time 
into a sort of State hospital, and I had to find out 
other quarters. 

I was delighted to meet my old friend Louis 
Blanc again, and to find him full of good spirits 
after all that he had gone through during the siege 
of Paris and the time of the Commune. He told 
me that while the siege was going on, the one pri- 
vation most keenly felt by him was the want of 
light every evening after the sun had set. He said 
that he could manage fairly well to put up with 
the scanty fare and the food, or scraps of food to 
which he could not venture to give a name, but 
to be absolutely without light when the later even- 
ing set in was rather too much for his endurance. 
Under the conditions it was quite impossible that 
the material of candles could be kept for mere il- 
luminating purposes, and to a student of literature 
and a professional author the night hours were 

190 



BACK TO LONDON 

terrible, as they could not be brightened by the 
reading of a book or the writing of a chapter. He 
told me, too, that he had no complaint to make 
with regard to the preservation of order under the 
rule of the Commune, and that, on the whole, the 
streets were better kept and the security of peo- 
ple in the streets better maintained than had been 
done during the time of the siege. Louis Blanc's 
wife was a German by birth and spoke French 
with a marked German accent, but he assured me 
that under the Commune she was able to go about 
the city absolutely unmolested, and to transact her 
household business without ever being subjected 
to molestation or insult on account of her nation- 
ality. I accompanied Louis Blanc to Versailles 
several times, and he always obtained admission 
for me to a good place in what I may call the 
Strangers' gallery of the National Assembly. I 
heard Thiers speak and Gambetta and many other 
men of distinction, and it was an event of deepest 
interest in my life to be present during the debates 
of an assembly which had for its object the restora- 
tion of peace, prosperity, and order in France, and 
the creation of a new Republic. 

The change in the fortunes of the country was 
somewhat curiously brought home to me one day 
when Louis Blanc and I happened to be passing 
the ruins of the Tuileries. We stopped and looked 
at them for a moment, and then it suddenly came 
back to my recollection that the very last time I 

191 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

had ever seen Louis Napoleon was one day when 
he and the Empress Eugenie were driving in 
their carriage out of the palace gates and a crowd 
of passers-by had collected to do them honour. 
That was before there had come up any expec- 
tation of a war between France and Prussia, and 
even so lately as that time there was still a large 
proportion of the French people who firmly be- 
lieved that Louis Napoleon was founding a strong 
and a stable Empire. It seemed to me but the 
other day that I had thus seen the Emperor and 
the Empress, and now the Empire had gone down 
and Louis Napoleon and Eugenie were exiles in 
London. During my stay in Paris I spent many 
pleasant hours in the home of Mr. Crawford, then 
the Paris correspondent of the " Daily News," and 
his wife, Emily Crawford. Mrs. Crawford was 
bright and charming in conversation, was a keen 
observer, full of ideas, and had thoroughly studied 
the social and political life of Paris. After her hus- 
band's death she succeeded him as correspond- 
ent of the " Daily News," and I never afterwards 
visited the French capital without going to see 
her and enjoying her genial hospitality. My stay 
in Paris at this time was not very long. I returned 
to my occupations in London with my thoughts 
still much occupied by the fallen Empire and the 
rising Republic. 

I worked on the " Daily News " as a writer of 
leaders and occasional literary articles very regu- 

192 



BACK TO LONDON 

larly. I used to go down to the offices of the 
" Daily News" in Bouverie Street and Fleet Street 
for five nights in each week, Sunday night being 
generally one of them, and I wrote on some topic 
or other which had just come up to interest the 
public. At the same time I kept assiduously to 
my work as a novelist and a writer of stories. I 
greatly enjoyed my work, and some of my novels 
were so favourably noticed by the press and so well 
received by the public that I began to ask myself 
now and then, and to be asked by others, whether 
it would not be better for me to give up the daily 
work of journalism altogether and devote myself 
to the writing of books. Life would most cer- 
tainly be easier and much more under my own 
control if I were able to make a living by settling 
down to my own desk in my own study, and were 
freed from the nightly attendance at a newspaper 
office and the mental distraction of having to write 
leading articles on the spur of the moment, on all 
manner of subjects. But if I had any occasional 
yearnings for the quiet and self-directed life of a 
literary man, I did not allow them to sway me, and 
I held on steadfastly to my newspaper work. 

My readers will probably have seen long before 
this that I had a very decided taste for politics 
and political subjects. I liked to feel that I was 
engaged, to some extent at least, in the thrilling 
movements of political life. It was often part of 
my duty, indeed during each session of Parlia- 

193 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

ment the main part of my duty, to write articles 
on the debates in the House of Commons, and I 
had always a seat provided for me in the Press 
gallery of the House, where I could listen to the 
debate and write my comments on it as it went 
on. There was a great charm to me about this 
study of the House of Commons. The arrange- 
ments of the Press gallery, though not nearly so 
good as they have been made in later times, were 
very well suited to the work of a leader-writer. 
There were convenient writing-rooms, and one 
could dine on the premises, if I may use that 
somewhat familiar expression when speaking of 
so august an institution as Westminster Palace. 
There were cultured and brilliant writers of lead- 
ing articles for my companions in the Press gal- 
lery, and among the reporters who had front seats 
in the same gallery during their " turns " of note- 
taking, there were young men who have since won 
high literary distinction. Even while the debate 
was actually going on, there were sure to be many 
speakers on whose words the public could not be 
supposed to hang with passionate interest, and 
the writer of leading articles could feel quite free 
while these orators were in possession of the House 
to pay a visit to the smoking-room, and relieve 
his mind for the while from the pains of literary 
composition. 

There was one difficulty in the way of the 
leader-writer during the early seventies, which has 

194 



BACK TO LONDON 

been to a great extent removed by the better me- 
chanical facihties given in more recent times to 
the production of the morning newspaper. When 
I was writing in the Press gallery for the " Daily 
News," the paper had to go to press at a very 
early hour in the morning, and, as a matter of 
necessity, the leader-writer's article had to be fin- 
ished and despatched to the office of the journal 
long before there was any chance of the sitting 
coming to a close. After his article, completed 
so far as he could complete it, had reached the 
editorial office, there might still be some little 
time during which the editor could add a few lines 
in further explanation of the course which the 
debate was taking. But it happened not infre- 
quently that the debate went on, and that the di- 
vision was taken long after the time when any 
addition or alteration could be made in the lead- 
ing article. Therefore the leader-writer in the 
Press gallery had always to bear in mind that he 
must not construct his article on the basis of a 
too confident expectation as to what might hap- 
pen before the close of the sitting. He must do 
his best to see that the coming events which might 
not have quite cast their shadow before were not 
found to be in absolute contradiction with a fore- 
cast indulged in too confidently by the writer. 
The inevitable result of this condition of things 
was that the article had often to be a kind of rhe- 
torical essay in the air — an essay on the whole 

195 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

general subject, not committing the paper to any 
final opinion on the effect of the evening's debate. 
To one behind the scenes, who thoroughly under- 
stood the working of the system, there was occa- 
sionally something grotesque and even comic 
about the final form which the article took in the 
morning's issue of the journal. Let me assume, 
in order to make my meaning clear, a case not 
merely possible, but which in many instances 
actually occurred. The subject of debate, we will 
suppose, was a resolution brought forward by 
some leading orator of the Opposition, condemning 
the Government for a course he believed it meant 
to take with regard to a great crisis in foreign 
affairs. The debate was thought likely to last for 
two or three sittings, and the leader-writer had 
this belief fully in his mind when he began to 
write his article. If he were an experienced hand, 
he took care not to rely too much on this belief, 
and tried to secure himself against possibilities by 
making his article a sort of general attack on the 
Government and its policy — I am now assuming 
that his journal was on the side of the Opposition 
— and giving the fullest support to the resolu- 
tion and the speaker who championed it. He kept 
on with his work until the time came when the 
" copy " had to be sent to the newspaper, and then 
he had nothing more to do but to listen to the 
debate, without any hope of being able to add to 
his commentary. But then comes in that terrible 

196 



BACK TO LONDON 

and unmanageable " unexpected." The leader of 
the Government rises at a late hour and delivers 
a speech declaring that his colleagues and he had 
no intention whatever of acting upon any such 
policy as that ascribed to them by the right hon- 
ourable gentleman who had proposed the resolu- 
tion. He explains with a certain jocose humour 
that he had not intervened at an earlier period of 
the debate because he wished to give the right 
honourable and honourable gentlemen on the 
other side of the House a full opportunity of ex- 
pressing the views which they evidently believed 
to be of great importance to the public interest. 
Then having made it clear that the course taken 
by the Opposition was a complete mistake, he puts 
it to the House whether there would be any ad- 
vantage in the prolongation of the debate. The 
result is that the resolution of censure has to be 
withdrawn, and the whole debate comes practi- 
cally to nothing. This settlement of the question 
becomes known to the editor of our imaginary 
journal just in time for him to prefix a few lines 
to the article, describing the fate of the resolution. 
It is too late for any alteration of the article itself, 
and too late, under the mechanical arrangements 
of the paper, for its complete withdrawal. There- 
fore the article comes out the next morning with 
its few opening lines announcing the fate of the 
resolution, and its whole substance a vigorous 
essay maintaining the purport of the resolution 

197 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

and denouncing the Government for a policy it 
never intended to pursue. I have often wondered 
what the ordinary reader, who knew nothing of 
the mechanical arrangements and restrictions 
under which the editor had to work, must have 
thought of an article opening with a definite and 
final announcement and then going on through 
its whole length as if no such announcement had 
ever been made. 

I have taken a peculiar instance, but I can 
assure my readers that I have known many in- 
stances in which something equally inconsistent 
has shown itself in the leading columns of a morn- 
ing newspaper. Of late years there has been so 
great an improvement in all the working arrange- 
ments — I mean the mechanical arrangements — 
of journalism and in the efficiency of the tele- 
graphic system that during my later time of leader- 
writing we were seldom driven to such embarrass- 
ing and unsatisfactory compromises. But for some 
time after my earliest connection with the " Daily 
News " such things were still possible, and could 
only be avoided with certainty by attempting no 
leading article on any great question in the House 
of Commons which was not sure to last over that 
particular sitting, or else only to write over the 
head and round about the subject of debate with- 
out committing the paper to any definite expression 
of opinion as to the result of the coming division. 

I had now settled down in London, and came 
198 



BACK TO LONDON 

into close association with some artistic, literary, 
and political circles. At that time the artistic 
school known as that of the pre-Raphaelites was 
spreading widely its influence, and there were 
many rising poets of this new school which recog- 
nised Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles 
Swinburne, and William Morris as its leaders 
and its lights. There was a brilliant circle existing 
then in London, whose social life I have described 
in another book of mine as the Bohemia of Fitz- 
roy Square. I gave it that name because its central 
point might be said to be the house and studio 
of Ford Madox Brown, the founder of the pre-Ra- 
phaelite school of painters, and afterwards closely 
connected with the Rossetti family. Madox Brown 
was a painter of really original genius, of splendid 
executive power, and of the highest culture in his 
art. The squares and streets in the neighbourhood 
of Fitzroy Square were then much occupied by 
literary men, by painters, and by rising politicians. 
I hear that this region, which for a while fell into 
a sort of obscurity when some of its leading intel- 
lectual lights had gone out, is once again becoming 
a centre of literature and art. In the days of Ford 
Madox Brown this was its especial characteristic. 
Madox Brown himself was not only a great painter, 
but a deep thinker on most subjects, and, unlike 
many artists, he took an intense interest in politi- 
cal reforms of every kind, in all movements. Parlia- 
mentary or other, which tended to the advancement 

199 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

of education and of progress towards political free- 
dom and the abolition of disqualifying restrictions. 
I found myself deeply interested in the society 
around me, and I never look back upon those 
times without feeling that I was especially fortu- 
nate in my association with such a set of workers. 
We used to have frequent gatherings in each 
other's houses for the purpose of discussing every 
new development in art and letters and political 
life, and the interest created by our genial meet- 
ings began to bring leaders of public opinion 
from the circles of the West End to share in our 
conversations. 

We were near to the British Museum and to 
the London University College buildings, and the 
student might well have found himself at home 
and happy in such a region. My son was a pupil 
in the school and college attached to the London 
University, and my daughter studied art in the 
Slade School for some years. I do not believe that 
her education has suffered in any sense from the 
fact that she never attended any school of general 
instruction. It was in itself a liberal education for 
her to have been brought up in constant associa- 
tion with that which I have called the Bohemia 
of Fitzroy Square. I may mention in describing 
this part of my life that we indulged ourselves 
every year in a holiday of foreign travel. We spent 
our holidays in France, Holland, and Belgium, 
and in Italy, making ourselves especially well 

200 



BACK TO LONDON 

acquainted with Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, 
and the Italian lakes. It seemed to me at the time, 
and seems to me still, that this was about as good a 
system of education as my son and daughter could 
have obtained. 

Meanwhile I kept on working at the produc- 
tion of novels, and some of these were successful 
enough to justify me in keeping to that line of 
productiveness. But I also began to take closer 
and deeper interest in politics, and I got into the 
way of speaking at political meetings and taking 
part in associations having for their object the 
promotion of the Irish national cause. I had never 
for a moment lost my sympathy with that cause, 
or thrown away any opportunity of helping towards 
its advancement. One of my near neighbours at 
that time was a young man whose name afterwards 
became famous throughout the civilised world, the 
late Charles Stewart Parnell. I first came to know 
him because we were both members of an associa- 
tion of London Irishmen banded together for the 
spread of the Irish national cause. My home was 
then in Gower Street, and Parnell lived in one 
of the streets leading out of it. He used to come 
to my house very often, and we had long talks 
over political affairs. One of Parnell's sisters was 
greatly devoted to painting, and Parnell, though 
not much of an artist in the ordinary sense, took 
a kindly interest in my daughter's early studies at 
the Slade School. He was a very young man then, 

201 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

and indeed his whole life did not last beyond 
middle age. He was very tall, very handsome, with 
finely moulded, delicate features. His eyes were 
especially remarkable. I have not seen others 
like them. Their light was peculiar, penetrating, 
and (to use aptly a somewhat hackneyed term) 
magnetic. His manners in private life were singu- 
larly sweet and winning, and in the company of 
his friends he was both humorous and witty. His 
influence over me and his advice began to give 
more and more a distinctly political turn to my 
career. He had already begun to make himself 
a most conspicuous figure in the House of Com- 
mons, but as yet there were very few who could 
foresee the high and unique position which he 
was destined to hold as a political leader. 

I had for a long time been contemplating an 
attempt at historical work, and my first idea was 
to write a history of the English Radical party. 
My intentions were well known to my friend Sir 
John Robinson, the manager of the " Daily News," 
and through him came the chance which first led 
to my undertaking a political work of a consider- 
ably wider order. A great and popular publishing 
firm in London was contemplating the production 
of a history of Queen Victoria's reign, and a lead- 
ing member of the firm happened to have some 
conversation on the subject with Sir John Robin- 
son, who suggested my name as that of a likely 
man to undertake such a work. The immediate 

202 



BACK TO LONDON 

result of this suggestion was that I received an 
offer from the publishing firm on what appeared 
to me fair and even liberal terms, which I promptly 
accepted, and an engagement was entered into 
that I should write the history. I went to work at 
once, and gave all my spare time to the earlier 
chapters of the book. This was a task entirely 
congenial with my literary inclinations. The reign 
of Queen Victoria had begun when I was yet but 
a little child, and had thus " folded in the orb of 
my existence." I had always been from my very 
boyhood deeply interested in passing events, and 
I therefore thought that in attempting the history 
of the Victorian reign I was not dealing with an 
altogether unfamiliar subject. I could appreciate, 
to begin with, the proportions of all the great 
events occurring during that time, — which was in 
fact my own lifetime, — and I felt that I was not 
entering into an unknown field when I took upon 
myself to tell the story of the reign. 

I was working steadily on my opening chapters 
when my historical labours were suddenly inter- 
rupted. Some paragraphs had just then appeared 
in several London newspapers announcing the 
fact that I had been requested by an Irish constit- 
uency to become its representative in the House 
of Commons, as a member of the Irish National 
party. The publishers who had entered into the 
engagement with me became alarmed at the idea 
of presenting to the reading world a history of the 

203 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

reign having for its author a member of the Home 
Rule party in Parliament. At that time, as indeed 
at many times before and since, the average Brit- 
ish reader was not likely to regard with much 
favour anything done or attempted by one who 
avowed his association with such a political group. 
I believe also that the paragraphs in the news- 
papers gave it to be understood that if elected to 
Parliament I might be expected to take my place 
among the most advanced of the Irish National- 
ists — among those who were beginning to ac- 
knowledge the influence of Parnell. Under these 
conditions the publishers regarded the book as 
one foredoomed to failure in England, and they 
wrote to me expressing their views, and offering 
me a certain pecuniary compensation for the giv- 
ing up of the engagement on my part to write 
and on their part to publish the history. I need 
not go further into the details of the arrangements 
which followed — arrangements which were sub- 
mitted to the judgment of a small committee of 
arbitration representing each side of the dispute, 
and presided over by Sir John Robinson. I was 
quite resolved that under the circumstances my 
work must not be pressed upon the publishers, and 
so we came to a sort of friendly settlement as to 
the increase of the terms of compensation. 

I had, before this time, had some dealings with 
the firm of Chatto & Windus, and when the nego- 
tiations with the other publishers had come to an 

204 



BACK TO LONDON 

end, I showed the chapters I had written to Mr. 
Andrew Chatto, who looked over them, and after 
one short interview decided to publish the history. 
I worked hard at the first and second volumes, 
and these made their appearance without undue 
delay, under the title of "A History of Our Own 
Times." The opening volumes met with a success 
which I may say, without any affectation of mod- 
esty, was totally unexpected b)^ me — a success, too, 
which proved that the British public would not 
positively refuse to read a book, even a book on liv- 
ing history, because it was written by an Irishman 
who had avowed himself a supporter of the Irish 
national cause. I may say in passing that my career 
as journalist, novelist, and historian, depending for 
success upon the English public, might well have 
been regarded as hampered from the beginning 
by the fact that I was an Irishman, a Roman Cath- 
olic, and an advocate of the cause of Home Rule. 
But I never found these facts interfere in the 
slightest degree with the fair reception of my 
books by English critics or English readers. Of 
course there were times soon to come when the 
policy pursued by the Irish National party in the 
House of Commons aroused the wildest storms 
of indignation against us throughout England, and 
I do not say that if my first and second volumes 
had been published during one of these periods 
its success might not have been delayed in Eng- 
land by the temper of the times. But everybody 

205 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

must make allowance for such periods of political 
animosity, and we cannot expect that all readers 
should have minds quite free from the prejudices 
of the hour. What I desire to comment on with 
some emphasis is that I have not had to contend 
during my career with any unfair treatment on 
the part of publishers or public because of my 
nationality, my religion, or my political opinions. 
I may say, in passing from this subject, that the 
publication of the first and second volumes of 
" A History of Our Own Times " made a distinct 
epoch in my literary career, and that my close 
friendship with the publishing firm of Chatto & 
Windus, which began with the publication of that 
history, is likely to last during the remainder of 
my life. 

The newspapers which announced that I had 
been invited to stand as a candidate for the repre- 
sentation of an Irish constituency were correct in 
their announcement. I began to feel little doubt 
that whenever a vacancy occurred in one or other 
of certain Irish constituencies, I should be invited 
to offer myself as a candidate for the vacant seat. 
Up to this time I had not committed myself to 
any definite support of either of the two sections 
into which the Irish Parliamentary party was then 
divided. Let it be understood that there was no 
difference of principle in that party so far as Home 
Rule and the great Land question were concerned. 
On these and most other of the questions affect- 

206 



BACK TO LONDON 

ing the national interests of Ireland, the whole 
party was of one mind. But there was a great and 
growing division of opinion as to the best method 
of conducting the campaign in Parliament for 
the settlement of these questions. No actual and 
formal disruption of the party had yet taken place, 
and Isaac Butt was still accepted on both sides as 
the leader of the Irish Nationalist members. The 
differences already making themselves apparent, 
which ended in something like a revolt in the 
party, were entirely concerned with the method 
in which the struggle ought to be conducted in 
the House of Commons. Isaac Butt, the nominal 
leader, was a politician of the old school, filled 
with a spirit of deference for all the systems and 
the forms of the House of Commons, and anxious 
that the party should show itself thoroughly amen- 
able to the authorities and the usages of the House. 
On the other hand, Parnell had already made his 
mark by endeavouring to introduce an entirely 
different system of policy and of tactics. Parnell's 
firm belief was that the one only course for the 
Irish Parliamentary party was to compel the atten- 
tion of the whole country to the national claims 
of Ireland. His desire was to make it clear to the 
House of Commons and to the country that if 
the House would not give its due consideration 
to the claims urged by the Irish members, then 
the Irish members would allow no other work to 
be done. 

207 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

Parnell's policy was, in fact, that system of ob- 
struction which afterwards created so great a com- 
motion all through the country, and became talked 
of throughout the whole civilised world. The 
rules of the House of Commons then gave almost 
infinite opportunities for the working of the policy 
of obstruction. That policy was no invention 
of Parnell's, and had indeed been a recognised 
method of Parliamentary warfare ever since the 
constitutional system in its more modern form 
came to be established in England. But in the 
days before Parnell had come to the front, the 
policy of obstruction was only put into practice 
at rare intervals and when some exceptional oc- 
casion arose which one or other political party 
might regard as a justification for resisting, by 
every constitutional means, the action of the Gov- 
ernment. Our history is full of instances in which 
illustrious leaders of the Opposition had felt them- 
selves warranted in opposing the passage of some 
particular measure by means of unmitigated al- 
though strictly constitutional obstruction. But 
the novelty in the Irish case was that Parnell for 
the first time adopted the idea of resisting sys- 
tematically every measure brought in by the 
Administration unless or until the whole claims 
of Ireland should obtain a fair hearing. Parnell 
proposed to use on behalf of all the claims of 
Ireland the policy which English leaders had only 
applied on rare occasions to exceptional measures. 

208 



BACK TO LONDON 

Parnell, it should be borne in mind, was always 
and above all things a constitutional and parlia- 
mentary politician. He had measured the whole 
situation with calm and keen scrutiny ; he thor- 
oughly recognised the immense power which 
England could bring to bear for crushing a rebel- 
lious movement, and he therefore never gave the 
slightest encouragement to any policy which 
could bring about such a result. But he felt con- 
vinced that, even while keeping strictly within the 
lines of the Constitution, the Irish members could 
so completely delay and disarrange the whole 
business of the House of Commons as to make 
it worth the while of any Ministry to come to 
terms with them on the subject of the national 
claims. Furthermore, Parnell had a strong con- 
viction that if, by such a policy, the attention 
of the whole English people could be aroused or 
even startled into a knowledge of the fact that 
Ireland had some claims to press which she would 
not abandon, the effect would be in the end to ob- 
tain a hearing for the Irish cause from all reason- 
able Englishmen, and thus to secure before long 
a recognition of the justice of Ireland's demands. 
The idea that Parnell ever sought to carry out his 
policy for the mere purpose of tormenting and 
distracting the hostile majority in the House of 
Commons, an idea commonly entertained in Eng- 
land at one time, was utterly absurd. Parnell be- 
lieved that he had found the only practicable and 

209 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

available method, under all the conditions, of 
securing a full consideration for the Irish cause, 
and to secure a full consideration for it was, in his 
belief, to secure its ultimate peaceful triumph. He 
was first elected to the House of Commons in 
April, 1875, and he very soon began his policy of 
obstruction. His policy was entirely in antagonism 
to that of Isaac Butt and the elder members of the 
Irish National party. But many of the younger men 
took to it cordially, and Parnell soon began to find 
that he had to support him an increasing num- 
ber of followers. It gradually became evident that 
the party would have to choose once for all be- 
tween the policy of Butt and the policy of Parnell. 
In the early days of 1879, a vacancy occurred 
in the representation of Longford County in Ire- 
land because of the death of one of its two mem- 
bers. I received quite unexpectedly from some 
leading Nationalists in the county an invitation to 
stand as a candidate for the vacant seat. I made 
up my mind at once to accept the invitation, and 
started that same evening, with my son, in the 
train for Holyhead on my way to Longford. 



210 



CHAPTER XII 

MEMBER FOR LONGFORD 

My electioneering campaign in Longford does 
not afford me much opportunity for any descrip- 
tion of the characteristic humours supposed to 
belong to a Parliamentary contest in an Irish con- 
stituency. There was not from beginning to end 
the slightest chance of serious and practical op- 
position to the popular candidate. The Conserva- 
tive or Tory party in the county was represented 
only by the resident landlords and their depend- 
ents, while an overwhelming majority of the voters 
were thoroughly Nationalistic in political princi- 
ples. There was, to be sure, a certain difference 
of opinion among these voters as to the length 
they were prepared to go in supporting the old 
Nationalist policy or the new ; in other words, in 
supporting Butt or Parnell. But it might safely 
be taken for granted that no difference of opinion 
among the majority of the voters on this question 
could possibly be regarded as holding out any pro- 
mise of success to a Tory candidate. I believe I 
had been invited to stand by some of the leaders of 
the local Nationalist party on the ground that I 
was not likely to go into extremes on the one side 

211 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

or the other. They felt that I would neither re- 
fuse to Isaac Butt an opportunity of mending his 
ways and adopting a stronger policy, nor deny 
any recognition of the rising claims of Parnell. 
Among the Longford constituents these Parnell- 
ite claims were certainly growing in strength, and 
it was probably well known that I was a personal 
friend of Parnell, although not yet actually pledged 
to his Parliamentary policy. I had therefore a very 
easy and pleasant time of it in this my first ap- 
pearance as a candidate for election to the House 
of Commons. 

One of the leading Nationalists of the county, 
from whom, indeed, and through whose influence 
I had received my invitation to become a candi- 
date, was Mr, Harry McCann, whose close friend- 
ship I obtained — a friendship which lasted until 
his death not many years ago. Harry McCann 
was a very remarkable and interesting figure in 
the local life of his county. He was by occupation 
what used to be called a gentleman-farmer, and he 
carried on a large business with the products of 
his farm. He had a fine figure, an expressive face, 
an immense shaggy beard, and energetic move- 
ments. He looked as if he might have stepped 
on to Longford soil from one of Bret Harte's 
mining camps. He was a splendid horseman and 
devoted to hunting and steeple-chasing. But he 
had a great deal more in him than an ordinary 
observer would have assumed after a casual meet- 

212 



MEMBER FOR LONGFORD 

ing. McCann was really a man of remarkable nat- 
ural ability ; he had had a very good education to 
begin with, and he had read and studied much 
for himself. He had travelled on the European 
Continent and in the United States and Canada, 
and he always carried away with him vivid im- 
pressions of everything he had seen. He was a 
thinking man in his w^ay, and his ideas, whether 
right or wrong, were all his own. He was always 
anxious to learn something new, and if anybody 
with whom he came into conversation could tell 
anything worth knowing, Harry McCann was sure 
to get it out of him. Few men whom I ever met 
have seemed to me more interesting in conversa- 
tion than my dear old friend Harry McCann, and 
I have always thought that if he had been a man 
of independent means, or had possessed any per- 
sonal ambition, he might have played a conspicu- 
ous and honourable part in public life. But he had 
a wife and children to support, and he was strongly 
and almost sentimentally attached to that part of 
Ireland familiar to him from his boyhood. No per- 
suasion could induce him to accept a seat in the 
House of Commons as one of the representatives 
of his county, because it would have taken him 
away so much from his beloved home. It was, I am 
sure, because he was a close reader of books, new 
as well as old, that he had come to take an interest 
in my writings, and had been led to believe that I 
might be a suitable representative of Longford. All 

213 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

the time he had to spare from his business con- 
cerns and from hunting appointments he devoted 
to local affairs, and at the time when I first knew 
him he was chairman of the Longford Board of 
Guardians. He was a most hospitable man, was 
fond of entertaining his friends, and gave them 
excellent wines. He was generous to all who had 
need of his help, and the poor of Longford found 
in him a sympathetic and benevolent friend. He 
had come to hold great influence in his part of 
the county, for every one knew that he had a clear 
head and a sound judgment, and that he sought 
no personal or selfish advantages in any of his 
public acts. He was a most delightful host, im- 
bued with all the spirit of a high-class and much- 
travelled country gentleman of an order which I 
think is not quite common in secluded parts of 
the country, whether England or Ireland, in our 
present time. Harry McCann would have kept 
the dullest company alive by his genuine gift of 
humour, his quickness of repartee, his skill as a 
story-teller, and the variety of illustration which 
he was able to give to every subject from his own 
mind, his reading, and his experiences. He also 
possessed that rare and happy quality of sym- 
pathy which enabled him to see the best that 
was in every man, and thus to bring it forth in 
conversation. I enjoyed many dinner parties at 
his house ; and he did not confine his invitations 
merely to men of his own political views, but had 

214 



MEMBER FOR LONGFORD 

made for himself close friends among Conserva- 
tive landlords as well as among Irish National- 
ists. One entertainment given at his house I have 
ever since borne in mind, and it always seems 
to me as if it had come into life from the pages 
of one of Scott's novels. First, we had a dinner 
at which only men were present, and the viands 
and the wines would have done credit to a lordly 
" pleasure-house," while the talk that went round 
the table was as sparkling as the finest cham- 
pagne could desire to have for its accompaniment. 
Then there came an evening party, at which of 
course a crowd of ladies was present, and later 
still there was a dance which we kept up until 
the stars had faded from the sky and the flush of 
dawn came to tell of the inquisitive day. Nothing 
could in its way have been, as I thought, more 
picturesque than the scene which I looked upon 
outside the hall-door of the house as the guests 
were taking their departure. The ladies went off 
in carriages, many of the male guests mounted 
their horses ; the whole drive was covered with 
the departing guests on horse, in carriage, or on 
foot ; there was loud interchange of friendly fare- 
wells and cheery congratulations on the success of 
the evening's entertainment; some of the mounted 
guests carolled snatches of songs, the ladies in 
the carriages waved their handkerchiefs to the 
host and hostess at the doorway, and then the 
dispersing crowd began to stream its different 

215 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

ways along the road and over the range of low- 
lying hills. It must have been something in this 
movement of horses and carriages and this wav- 
ing of farewells under the skies of the rising morn 
that gave in my fancy an entirely old-time aspect 
to the scene, and set me thinking of Walter Scott 
when I might perhaps have been reminded of 
Charles Lever. 

One of Harry McCann's close friends, however, 
whom I often met in his house, did certainly, 
remind me of some types of Irish character to be 
found in Lever's novels. This was a local lawyer, 
an attorney as the phrase then put it, Mr. Chris- 
topher Reynolds, or Kit Reynolds as he was al- 
most invariably described by those who knew him, 
and even by many who did not know him but had 
only heard of him. Kit Reynolds had a very con- 
siderable practice in the law courts of Longford 
and of Dublin; but unless you happened to be 
a client of his or engaged in some lawsuit wherein 
he represented the other side, you might have met 
him incessantly without discovering that he had 
anything to do with the instructing of counsel or 
the preparation of briefs. His whole sense and soul 
appeared to be given up to sport of some kind or 
other. He was devoted to hunting and to horse- 
racing, and he seemed never to talk voluntarily on 
any other subject. He was full of a rich jovial hu- 
mour, and used to rattle off good things as easily 
as another man could give out commonplaces. He 

216 



MEMBER FOR LONGFORD 

was a good shot, had an intense interest in all open- 
air sports, and was at the same time a capital hand 
with a pack of cards. No one could help liking 
him, and I do not remember having ever heard any 
censorious criticism passed upon him. The whole 
figure was an absolute novelty to me. I had known 
in my native city many barristers and attorneys 
who loved hunting and racing and were good hands 
at field sports of all kinds, but with them the hunt- 
ing and the racing and the other field sports 
seemed only to be the holiday pastimes which re- 
lieved the close and heavy work of their profes- 
sional business. Kit Reynolds, on the other hand, 
seemed to the ordinary observer as if he had been 
created for nothing but riding and sport. I sup- 
pose he must have attended to his professional 
work somehow or other, and indeed I had myself 
some dealings with him in his professional capa- 
city, but except for this accidental fact and for what 
his friends told me about him, I might never have 
known that Kit Reynolds was under the necessity 
of making a living by his work as a lawyer. 

The last time of my meeting with Harry Mc- 
Cann saw an event which may be described as a 
sort of milestone, metaphorically that is to say, in 
the story of my life. There had been during the 
day a distribution of prizes for athletic sports, and 
in the evening we had a dinner at Harry McCann's 
and a final dance. That was for me a final dance 
in the most literal sense. I accomplished, not 

217 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

altogether too awkwardly let me hope, a waltz or 
a polka with a Longford lady, and that was the 
last time I ever took any part but that of a spec- 
tator in the festivities of the ball-room. There- 
upon I accepted my place as one of the order 
of elderly gentlemen who are supposed to look 
down with a sort of benevolent pity on the vain 
and frivolous amusements of the dance. 

I was most agreeably surprised and impressed 
when I found on my first visit to Longford that 
I had to deal with so instructive a guide and so 
companionable and interesting a host. Under his 
conduct I attended several meetings, private as 
well as public, brought together to consider and 
pronounce upon my qualifications as a Nationalist 
representative. I had very little real difficulty to 
contend with; and even if there had been much 
more trouble to encounter, it would have been 
made to seem light under the genial influence of 
Harry McCann's amusing stories and unfailing 
encouragement. We had alarming reports every 
now and then about some new candidate who was 
to be started at any risk by the Conservative land- 
lords ; and although it was quite certain that no 
such candidate would have the least chance of 
obtaining the seat, yet the trouble, the excite- 
ment, the disturbance and commotion, as well as 
the expense of a contested election, seemed to 
us only all the more undesirable because abso- 
lutely futile and merely vexatious. Nothing came 

218 



MEMBER FOR LONGFORD 

of these rumours, however, and when the day 
fixed for the nomination arrived, no other candi- 
date offered himself to the constituency. Then 
followed what was to me at the time the most 
nervously exciting part of the whole business. 
After the nomination the presiding officer had to 
allow an hour for the possible appearance of a sec- 
ond candidate. This short interval we passed in 
the office of the local magistrates. Harry McCann 
and two or three other friends were with me, the 
authorities were properly represented, and it might 
have seemed not disagreeable to spend an hour in 
social conversation while the minutes were speed- 
ing on towards the completion of the fateful hour. 
But my trouble was that the minutes did not seem 
to me to be speeding on by any means, but rather 
to be crawling along with unutterable tediousness. 
It was always one of my weaknesses to become 
very nervous when a fixed time had to be spent in 
mere waiting and doing nothing. My weakness in 
this way was soon discovered by my friend Harry 
McCann. After what had seemed to me an intol- 
erable stretch of time, — a lapse in fact of some fif- 
teen minutes, — I rose from my seat unthinkingly 
and began to walk up and down the room. Then 
McCann declared to me with a bright smile that 
he had never until that moment suspected me of 
being a nervous man ; but when he saw me get 
up and begin to pace the room, he felt perfectly 
assured that he had plucked out the heart of my 

219 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

mystery. The poet Cowper it is, I think, who tells 
us to " beware of desperate steps," for the good 
reason that " the longest day, Hve till to-morrow, 
will have passed away." I might from my own ex- 
perience modify the advice for the benefit of future 
Parliamentary candidates placed under conditions 
like to mine, and recommend them not to begin 
walking impatiently up and down the room, but 
to remember that the longest hour will pass away 
within sixty minutes. This was certainly what hap- 
pened in my own case, and the presiding officer pre- 
sently announced that the appointed time had 
passed, that no second candidate had been pro- 
posed, and that I was therefore elected as one of 
the members for the county of Longford. 

I was much interested in my observation of the 
life, the movements, and the ways of Longford dur- 
ing my earlier visits to my constituents. Indeed, 
I was deeply interested in them also during my 
later visits, but at first they had the charm for me 
of novelty and of old recollections as well. I had 
been for more than quarter of a century a resident 
in England before I was invited to stand for Long- 
ford, and therefore I found this charm of novelty 
in being once again an Irishman on his own soil 
and among his own people. But of course all my 
old memories of Ireland came to lend the other 
charm of recollection and association to everything 
I saw around me when I visited my Longford con- 
stituency. Longford is a central part of Ireland, 

220 



MEMBER FOR LONGFORD 

far away from the sea and from the great seaport 
cities, is, or was then, very seldom visited by stran- 
gers, and had kept up all its old ways, undiluted 
by the ways of London or Liverpool or Manches- 
ter. It seemed to me that I had gone back to the 
days of my youth, and was seeing Ireland as I 
had known her in the far-off time before I ever 
set foot on English soil. There was hardly any- 
thing to be noticed among those whom I met in 
Longford which suggested an ambition to imitate 
English manners and fashions, or to be thought 
genteel and polite according to what was assumed 
to be the English mode — an ambition which has a 
somewhat unattractive and ungraceful effect on 
certain classes in other parts of Ireland, who fancy 
that they are improving their social condition by 
striving to become less Irish and more English. 
I could easily think of some Irish communities 
where a man who had such influence and such a 
position as my friend Harry McCann had in Long- 
ford might have made it part of his ambition to 
assimilate himself as far as possible to the social 
usages and manners of Belgravia. 

The mention of that fashionable region of Lon- 
don recalls to my mind an amusing experience of 
my own during my first canvassing expeditions 
among the Longford electors. I was brought one 
day by some of my friends to call upon a shop- 
keeper of Ballymahon, — Goldsmith's village, — 
who, although in but a small way of trade, had some 

221 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

influence among his people and was looked up to as 
a judicious guide in political affairs. He received 
me very kindly, told me he had heard very good 
opinions as to my qualifications for the represen- 
tation of the place, and was quite prepared to 
support me in my candidature. But he said that 
he had great fears about Irishmen who enter the 
House of Commons being led away from their Na- 
tional principles by the temptations of high life in 
London, and he therefore urged me with friendly 
impressiveness never to allow myself to be misled 
by the aristocratic society of Belgravia and Soho. 
My poor friend's knowledge of London social life 
was evidently not drawn from any close study 
even of English newspapers, and the most feeble- 
minded Nationalist candidate might have pledged 
himself in full sincerity then and there never to 
become a victim to the aristocratic society of Soho! 
I did not, however, take refuge in this mean eva- 
sion, but accepting my friend's advice in the spirit 
in which it was offered, I gave him my earnest 
assurance that neither Belgravia nor Soho should 
win me away from my adhesion to the National 
cause. I think I may fairly say for myself that 
not all the promises made by Parliamentary candi- 
dates before an election have been kept so faithfully 
as this pledge of mine, and I have remained ever 
since as resolute a Nationalist, even though I have 
actually lived on the confines of Belgravia and 
occasionally made excursions into Soho. 

222 



MEMBER FOR LONGFORD 

At one period of my candidature, a rumour 
had gone abroad through the town that the son of 
a local Conservative landlord was about to offer 
himself as a rival claimant for the votes of the 
constituency. It so happened that this rumour 
seemed to have acquired especial force on a day 
when a great fair and market was held in the 
town, and I was informed that evening that in 
the middle of the market square, a resident of the 
place, who had come to the fair to sell a pig, had, 
in some wild outburst of anti-patriotic sentiment, 
called upon those around him to join in three 
cheers for the Conservative candidate. What hap- 
pened then } Let me tell it in the words of the 
honest man who told me the whole story. " Then, 
sir," said he, " the first person who knocked him 
down was his own wife ! " This, my narrator evi- 
dently seemed to think, was one of the noblest 
and at the same time one of the most effective 
proofs of patriotic virtue that could have been 
given even by an Irish woman. 

I feel bound to say that during my time in 
Longford there was nothing like serious disturb- 
ance even for a moment, that I never saw any 
evidences of excessive drinking, and that political 
differences never seemed to obliterate general 
good-will and private friendship among my con- 
stituents. I have in my mind the most agree- 
able recollections of my visits to Longford, and 
of the friendships which I made there, the 

223 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

only melancholy tone about them echoing from 
the fact that some of those whom I best knew and 
most liked in Longford have already passed out 
of life. There were many men in Longford, shop- 
keepers and others, who would be ranked socially 
as of the lower middle class, who had intelligence 
and education enough to do credit to any order 
— men who had read books as well as newspapers, 
who could talk even on literary and artistic sub- 
jects with a freshness and keenness of apprecia- 
tion which would have done no discredit even to 
Belgravia, if we say nothing of Soho. My intro- 
duction to Parliamentary life was accomplished 
for me by the people of Longford in a manner 
which left no memory behind it but that of grate- 
ful acknowledgment and unalloyed kindness. 



224 



CHAPTER XIII 

MY WORK IN THE HOUSE 

The day when one first enters the House of Com- 
mons as a member marks assuredly an eventful 
epoch in his life. I had been familiar for many 
years with the representative chamber as an ob- 
server from the Press gallery or one of the public 
galleries, but I felt none the less a sensation of 
nervous strangeness when I crossed the bar for 
the first time, was introduced by two brother mem- 
bers, signed my name in the book on the table, 
shook hands with Mr. Speaker, and then found a. 
seat on one of the benches usually occupied by 
the Irish National Party. The only other event of 
anything like equal importance in the career of a 
new member is the making of his first speech. I 
had not been long in the House before the oppor- 
tunity was afforded me, and pressed upon me, of 
venturing on my first attempt at Parliamentary 
speech-making. The subject under discussion was 
a motion made by Mr. Shaw Lefevre, an English 
Liberal member, calling for some reform in the 
oppressive system of land tenure which then pre- 
vailed in Ireland. I may say at once that my occu- 
pations in life had not put me much in the way 

225 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

of getting a practical and minute knowledge of the 
Irish land tenure system. I had contemplated its 
general outlines with interest, had read much that 
John Stuart Mill and other English authorities 
had written on the subject, and much that had 
been written by leading Irishmen, and I therefore 
knew enough to construct a speech about it ; but 
I certainly did not imagine that I could add any- 
thing either practical or original to the arguments 
of the debate. Indeed, I should not have ventured 
to speak on so important a question just then, but 
that many of my colleagues in the Irish Party 
thought it would be a suitable occasion for a new 
Irish representative to make his first claim on the 
attention of the House. I need hardly say that I 
felt miserably and abjectly nervous while waiting 
for my opportunity to rise and endeavour to catch 
the Speaker's eye. I had of course no doubt as to 
the likelihood of my being able to attract that au- 
thoritative orb, because it is one of the courteous 
usages of the House that a member rising to speak 
for the first time never finds his claim disputed, and 
is always called upon by Mr. Speaker. But although 
thus sure of a hearing, I was nervous none the less, 
and my nervousness increased rather than dimin- 
ished when I had obtained my hearing and found 
myself engaged for the first time in addressing 
the House of Commons. I was received very cour- 
teously by the House, was listened to with benig- 
nant patience, and I had enough of my wits still 

226 



MY WORK IN THE HOUSE 

under my control to enable me not to protract 
my speech to any unreasonable length. It is not 
too much to say that I positively did not know 
what I was saying, and derived my main courage 
from my knowledge that I could somehow manage 
to make an extemporaneous speech of moderate 
length without committing myself to any utter 
absurdity. Many of my friends and some kindly 
critics in the newspapers said that I had not shown 
any outward signs or symptoms of nervousness ; 
but I knew then, and I know now, that my nerves 
were inflicting punishment on me all the time. I 
do not hesitate to declare that when the speech 
was finished, and I resumed my seat, I had no 
feeling whatever but a sense of the utmost relief 
that the ordeal was over at last. I could not spare 
any thought to the mental question whether the 
speech had been a qualified success or an utter 
failure. All such considerations might come at a 
later period of the sitting or the next day perhaps, 
but for the time I could only congratulate myself 
on the fact that the speech was over and done 
with, and that I should not have to address the 
House of Commons again that night. 

The House of Commons is a very considerate 
and indulgent audience to any new member who 
does not show an inordinate amount of self-conceit, 
and does not convey in his manner the idea that he 
believes himself endowed with a special mission to 
teach the members something they never knew 

227 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

before, and to dazzle them with an eloquence to 
which the assembly has been hitherto a stranger. 
I can answer for it that my speech did not suggest 
that I was possessed with any such ideas, and so I 
take it for granted that my first effort at Parliamen- 
tary argument passed off on the whole as well as 
might be expected. One great ambition of my life 
had now been accomplished — I was actually a 
member of the House of Commons. I felt already 
a sense of ownership as I passed through the lob- 
bies and dining-rooms and libraries of the House, 
and I began to wonder within myself how I had 
ever contrived to live so long without seeking for 
such a position before. I always loved the life of 
the House of Commons. I went through years and 
years of the most exacting and the most exhausting 
Parliamentary struggles ; I took a part in all the 
obstructive movements which spread through so 
many sessions ; I had often for session after ses- 
sion to turn night into day and day into night, to 
go home after the sun had risen over that West- 
minster scene which Wordsworth has depicted ; I 
can remember having had to spend once three 
days in the House without ever leaving its pre- 
cincts ; and yet I can honestly say that I found 
enjoyment in the life of the House of Commons. 
Moreover, while I was thus striving to discharge 
my Parliamentary duties, I had all the time to 
work for a living by the writing of books and 
newspaper articles. 

228 



MY WORK IN THE HOUSE 

Even to a man of private fortune, the work of 
the House is often weary and exhausting, if that 
member be really resolved to pay a proper attention 
to his Parliamentary duties. But when, in addi- 
tion to minding the business of the House, he has 
also to mind his own business in order to maintain 
his family and himself, then it will easily be under- 
stood that he must sometimes feel disposed to 
grumble at a rapid succession of divisions coming 
in to interrupt his literary occupation. A division 
in the House of Commons takes up about twenty 
minutes, and if a large number of these should 
be brought about in the course of one sitting, it 
will easily be seen that the hapless member who 
has to make a living by his pen becomes in no 
merely metaphorical sense a victim to his Parlia- 
mentary duty. Let us remember, also, that the 
loss of time caused by the mechanical tramping 
through the division lobbies is not the only trouble 
or even the chief trouble of which our literary 
M. P. has to complain. Suppose, for instance, that 
he is a writer of novels — I have heard of such 
persons having seats in the House — and that he , 
has taken the opportunity of what seems likely to 
be an uneventful debate to go into the library or 
into one of the lobbies upstairs and get on with 
the work he has at heart. I need hardly say that 
there is no part of the House in which he can 
hope for absolute seclusion. The rooms in the 
library, when a thrilling debate is not going on, 

229 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

are usually well filled with members turning over 
the pages of books or writing letters. The lobbies 
upstairs are much used by members for the work 
of casual correspondence. No sane man could 
hope for quiet and complete isolation in one of 
the smoking-rooms. Let us suppose, then, that 
our novel-writing member betakes himself to one 
of the lobbies upstairs and sets to work on one 
of his chapters. He is deeply engrossed in the 
endeavour half to conceal and half to disclose the 
love secret of his heroine — a secret which is not 
to be kept wholly outside any guess on the part of 
the reader, and yet is to be withheld tantalizingly 
from full revelation until the right moment comes. 
A happy idea has arisen, but only faintly, in the 
mind of our author, like a gleam of light through 
a cloudy sky, which he hopes wall soon resolve 
itself into the radiance of a guiding star. Sud- 
denly the penetrating thrill of the division bell is 
heard all over the House, and the voices of the 
officials shouting " Division ! " " Division ! " carry 
their superfluous intimation to the ears of our 
novel-writing member. He jumps from his seat, 
leaving his manuscript behind him; hurriedly he 
makes inquiries on his way as to what the division 
is all about, or joins without inquiry a rush of his 
political colleagues, whose movements, he feels 
quite sure, will tell him the way he ought to go. 
Then, when the division has been duly gone 
through, he returns to his seat in the lobby up- 

230 



MY WORK IN THE HOUSE 

stairs. But where now is the idea which had just 
begun to shine upon him when the division bell 
rang ? He sits down, resolutely declining to enter 
into conversation with any one, and endeavours to 
collect his thoughts. But while he is still engaged 
in this effort the sound of the division bell is 
heard anew, and he knows that some other ques- 
tion has been raised in the House, and that he is 
bound in pursuance of his representative duty 
to take his part in the division, even though he 
does not yet know what it is all about. Every 
member of the House of Commons has known of 
occasions when this practice of dividing and divid- 
ing has gone on with only the briefest intervals 
of debate through the whole of a sitting. Our 
novel-writing member has perhaps to go home to 
his bed without having advanced the story of his 
heroine by a single coherent sentence from the 
time when the first sound of the division bell ter- 
rified that sensitive creature out of every revela- 
tion of her heart's emotion. 

But even if our friend is hopefully at work on a 
night when there are few or no divisions, it does 
not by any means follow that his imagination is 
allowed any the more to play its part undisturbed. 
Members are continually coming up and talking 
to him, asking questions of him, or making sug- 
gestions to him ; for the ordinary member, familiar 
with the ways of the place, never thinks of refrain- 
ing from putting a question to a brother member 

231 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

merely because he happens to be engaged in 
writing. Probably he takes it for granted that the 
member with a pen in his hand and a sheet of 
paper spread out before him is only answering one 
of the countless letters of inquiring constituents, 
into which no one is supposed to throw his whole 
soul. Our novelist tries to talk and at the same 
time to keep in his mind what he has been writing 
about and where he left off. Then some other 
member, seeing the two engaged in conversation, 
comes up and joins in the talk, and the invisible 
heroine is once again thrust into the background 
for the time. Or it may be some more decided 
and distracting interruption occurs. The leading 
Whip of the party to which our romancist belongs 
comes, rapid and eager, up to him, and with a 
voice and looks proclaiming some purpose of 
immediate importance, tells him that the leader 
of the party wants our poor friend to go back to 
his place in the House and prepare to take at the 
earliest possible moment a part in the debate. 
" You see," the Whip declares, " that fellow Rag- 
gles is making a savage attack upon us, and has 
been firing away especially at you for something 
you said in your speech last week, and the chief 
says that you must get up and reply to him the 
moment he sits down if you get the chance." I 
have already said that our novel-writing friend is 
devoted to his Parliamentary duties and is always 
anxious to obey the orders of his Parliamentary 

232 



MY WORK IN THE HOUSE 

leader. There is nothing for it but to go back 
to his place in the House, and to leave the heart 
troubles of his distracted heroine to evaporate for 
the present as best they can. Our poor friend has 
to seize his first chance of replying to the attack 
made upon his party and himself, and perhaps the 
chance does not come for an hour or two after he 
has settled down in his place to wait for it, and 
then, when he has fired off his speech after the 
best fashion he could, he feels bound to remain 
and listen to what can be said on the other side. 
So at last the sitting comes to an end, and the 
story of his heroine, like that of " Cambuscan 
bold," is left half told. 

The literary man or journalist of any school or 
order who endeavours to carry on his work while 
he occupies a seat in the House of Commons is al- 
ways liable to such interruptions and distractions. 
But I think the novel-writer has especial claims 
upon our sympathy. Suppose the member is writ- 
ing a leading article for a morning newspaper. To 
him, of course, the interruptions are perplexing 
and vexatious, but he knows what he wants to 
say; he has a case to make out with which he may 
be presumed to be thoroughly acquainted. After 
each interruption he can still go back to his South 
African question, or his preferential tariffs, and 
resume his work where he left it off, without find- 
ing that his mind has lost all grasp of the subject. 
In the same way if he is engaged on some histori- 

233 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

cal work, let us say the history of the Free Trade 
movement, he may well feel displeased and put 
out by frequent interruptions, the more especially 
if the time for the completion of his work is draw- 
ing near. But at least he has not to trust to his 
imagination or his invention for any of the nar- 
rative, and when he returns to some interrupted 
page of his manuscript, he is not likely to find that 
during the interval he has lost any knowledge of 
what Peel or Cobden was doing or preparing to do 
at that particular time. But our novel-writer car- 
ries all his materials within his own mind; and if 
his mind be disturbed by frequent interruptions, 
the materials are apt to get scattered, and, being 
but light and vaporous, are likely to get blown 
away into " the infinite azure of the past." I am 
entitled to consider this question with a certain 
impartiality and with some personal experience ; 
for I have tried to be journalist, novelist, and his- 
torical writer while an actively engaged member 
of the House of Commons. 

During all the earlier years of my Parliamen- 
tary career I had to go through an exceptionally 
troublesome time. Shortly after my election for 
the county of Longford, the life of Isaac Butt 
came to an end, and at this time it was quite evi- 
dent that Parnell was certain to obtain a complete 
control over the Irish Nationalist party. There 
was, however, an interval during which a man 
who represented those whom I may call the old- 

234 



MY WORK IN THE HOUSE 

fashioned Repealers, the late William Shaw, was 
chosen as successor to Butt. This was a sort of 
concession on the part of the majority of the 
Nationalist members, and was done with the hope 
that the followers of the dead Butt and of the liv- 
ing Parnell might thereby be brought into cohe- 
sion and unity. Parnell himself was not anxious 
to obtain the position of leader, and was quite 
willing to see his movement develop of its own 
accord. William Shaw was really a man of con- 
siderable ability, and might have made a very sat- 
isfactory leader at a period of less pressure and 
strain, but he was not equal to the demands of the 
period ; and when after a short interval a general 
election took place and the reelected Irish party 
met in Dublin to reconstruct their ranks, Parnell 
was proposed as leader in opposition to Shaw, and 
was made the victor by a large majority. The 
leader of the party bore the official title of Chair- 
man, and it was now thought that there should 
also be a vice-chairman, in order that, in the pos- 
sible absence of the leader, there might be some 
one invested with authority to carry on the work 
in his name. I was, to my own great surprise and 
I believe at Parnell's suggestion, elected to the 
office of vice-chairman, and thus invested with a 
responsibility which required of me a close and 
constant attendance during the sittings of the 
House. 

Then came on those succeeding sessions of con- 
235 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

tinuous obstruction which I have already briefly 
described — sessions during which Irish business 
occupied the greater part of the sittings of the 
House. But it was not only that the House was 
compelled to occupy itself thus often with our 
Irish business — there was also the fact that our 
policy compelled us often to take part in the dis- 
cussion of measures concerning only the interests 
of England or Scotland or Wales. Parnell's policy 
was to force on the House of Commons the ab- 
solute conviction that until some set of statesmen 
should make up their minds to consider seriously 
and thoroughly the Irish national demands with a 
view to conceding them at as early a period as 
might be, it would be impossible for the House of 
Commons to maintain any control over the dis- 
charge of its ordinary business. Therefore, we, 
the Irish National members, were kept constantly 
on the watch for any opportunity of making our 
presence felt by the House, and as I now held an 
official position in the Party, I felt more than ever 
bound to remain in the House during the whole 
course of every session. I had therefore the most 
frequent and ample opportunity of satisfying my- 
self as to the difficulties imposed upon a man who 
has to write leading articles, novels, and histories^ 
in order to make a living, and is at the same time 
compelled by conscience, by devotion to a politi- 
cal cause, and by the responsibility of an official 
position to make the House of Commons his lit- 

236 



MY WORK IN THE HOUSE 

erary workshop as well as his political sojourn. I 
have no doubt that some of my literary work must 
have been seriously damaged by the conditions 
under which it was carried on, but I could only 
make the best of my difficult position. I could not 
think of withdrawing from Parliamentary life so 
long as I could be of the slightest service to the 
national cause, or could even take the humblest 
/ share in striving for its success. I can only say 
that if all were to do again, I should follow the 
same course, and accept the service of Ireland's 
cause as the main business of my career. 

Yet despite all these difficulties and troubles, I 
still derived a certain personal enjoyment from the 
life and movement of the House of Commons. 
The members of that House very seldom carry 
their political animosities into their private and 
personal dealings. The most extreme Tory is on 
the friendliest terms with the advanced Radical 
when they meet in one of the dining-rooms or 
smoking-rooms or on the Terrace. Even while 
we were carrying on our most determined — and I 
have no doubt most disagreeable — obstruction, I 
was fortunate enough to make many warm friend- 
ships amcfng men opposed to Home Rule as well 
as to obstruction. Then of course in the House of 
Commons one has the opportunity of coming into 
friendly intercourse with men whom it is a privi- 
lege to know. I shall have something to say about 
many of these men as I go on with my story, but 

237 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

in the mean time I only desire to record my frank 
confession that, despite the incessant divisions and 
the all-night sittings, despite the exhausting efforts 
to make literature and politics work together, de- 
spite the interruptions to my novel and the cloud 
often cast over the fortunes of my heroine, I was 
still able to find elements of enjoyment in the 
atmosphere of the House of Commons. 

On a memorable day in the April of 1881, my 
son and I were driving through some of the West 
End London streets in order to be present at a 
marriage festival when our eyes were attracted 
by a startling announcement on a placard outside 
the window of a newspaper vendor's shop. The 
placard proclaimed that the later and special edi- 
tions of the morning papers contained the news of 
Lord Beaconsfield's death. My readers will readily 
understand that the announcement of that death 
did not allow us to keep our spirits quite in tone 
with the festivity in which we were about to take 
part. No matter how one may have been estranged 
by political opinions from any sympathy with Ben- 
jamin Disraeli's later career, it was quite impossible 
to learn that such a man had been removed from 
this living world, in which he had played so bril- 
liant and so many-sided a part, without a profound 
shock and an abiding sense of gloom. With Lord 
Beaconsfield I never had the good fortune to come 
into any personal association. He had been re- 
moved to the House of Lords before I obtained a 

238 



MY WORK IN THE HOUSE 

seat in the House of Commons, and I never once 
met him in private life. I had indeed an oppor- 
tunity which would otherwise have been very wel- 
come — an opportunity of being introduced to 
him under very gratifying conditions, but I was 
compelled most reluctantly to forego the chance. 
A lady of my acquaintance who had long enjoyed 
Lord Beaconsfield's friendship told me that Bea- 
consfield had spoken very kindly of something 
written by me, and had expressed a wish to meet 
me. The lady was willing to make an arrangement 
for that purpose, and Disraeli accepted an invita- 
tion from her to a luncheon party to which I was 
to be invited. A number of eminent persons were 
also invited, one of them a member of the royal 
family. But I was not destined to meet any one 
royal in rank or in letters at that gathering. Just 
before the day appointed for the luncheon a num- 
ber of my political colleagues in the Irish National 
party were arrested in Ireland under the operations 
of the exceptional laws which then prevailed there, 
and were committed to prison for some supposed 
offence in spoken words against the British Con- 
stitution. I felt but little inclined for festivity under 
such circumstances, and I knew that at the lunch- 
eon I should be sure to meet some members of the 
Administration, and I could not endure the idea of 
settling myself down to social enjoyment of such a 
kind at such a time, even if by some strange chance 
no paragraph about the luncheon party were to find 

239 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

its way into the columns of the " Morning Post." 
So I made my excuses to my hostess and privately 
gave her my reasons, and I renounced the chance 
of meeting Lord Beaconsfield, who died not very 
long after. 



240 



CHAPTER XIV 

A WANDERING HOLIDAY 

In the early autumn of 1881 I made up my mind 
to take a somewhat long holiday. During the first 
year of my work as a member of Parliament a 
great change had come over my life, on which I 
shall not allow myself to dwell at any length here. 
My wife, who had long been suffering from se- 
vere ill health, came to the end of her mortal 
troubles. Death removed her from this world on 
her birthday in August, and on her tombstone are 
carved among its other inscriptions the lines from 
Shakespeare : — 

" This day I breathed first ; time is come round, 
And where I did begin there shall I end ; 
My life is run his compass." 

My son and daughter and I sought rest after this 
calamity for a few weeks in Germany, chiefly in 
Heidelberg and Weimar, and then came back to 
English life again to do the best we could under 
the changed conditions. But after another year, 
given up by me almost entirely to the work of the 
House of Commons, I thought that I might fairly 
be allowed to devote the whole of the Parliamen- 
tary recess to some prolonged and reviving travel, 

241 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

much needed for all three of us. We revisited 
some familiar places — dear old Dutch cities among 
the rest, and Berlin and Dresden. Then we went 
to Prague, and made some stay in that which 
Thackeray has declared allusively to be the most 
picturesque city in the world. We went to Vienna 
and Buda-Pesth, wandered about Hungary, de- 
scended through the Austrian Tyrol to Trieste, 
and from Trieste steamed to Corfu, and thence to 
Athens. None of us three had seen the shores of 
Greece before, and Athens had been to us for a 
long time — to me indeed from my very boyhood 
— a city of dreams and longings and unspeakable 
interest. I can only say of it that, for all its mod- 
ern ways and its modernised buildings, the exist- 
ing Athens realised the dream city of my youth. 
I cannot help feeling glad that at the time when 
we landed there was not a train running from 
Piraeus to Athens, and therefore we went from the 
port to the capital by means of horses and wheels, 
just as might have been done in the days of Peri- 
cles, and no scream of a railway engine forced us 
back into the present. I shall never forget the 
scene which opened before us on the first morning 
after our arrival, when we stood on the steps of 
the Parthenon and looked upon Samos and the 
sea. But I do not intend to indulge here in de- 
scriptions of the Parthenon or the Acropolis or 
the plain of Marathon, or any other of the sights 
or scenes which we looked upon with what may 

242 



A WANDERING HOLIDAY 

well be called a feeling of reverence. We spent a 
month in Athens, and after my return to England 
I wrote a novel, the whole scene of which was laid 
in Greece, and for the most part in the city of the 
Violet Crown. 

From Greece we went to Constantinople, thence 
to Egypt, where we read Eastern stories while 
floating along the Nile, and then to '^he Holy 
Land and Jerusalem. To look upon Jerusalem, to 
wander through Jerusalem, gave me the only ex- 
perience of travel to be found in this world which 
could call up yet deeper emotions than even 
Athens could in my mind and heart. When we 
left Jerusalem on our homeward way, we had 
to spend four dreary days in Jaffa waiting for a 
steamer to take us on board. The weather was 
stormy, and the harbour of Jaffa, if it can indeed 
be called a harbour, was barricaded with rocks, 
which in such weather rendered it dangerous for 
any steamer to approach within reasonable dis- 
tance of the shore. During these four days the 
rain streamed down very much as it might have 
done on the Cornish or the Irish coast, and we 
were compelled to stay for the most part in the 
shelter of a very dismal and unpicturesque Ger- 
man hotel, which a Teutonic proprietor bearing 
the unalluring name of Hardegg had established 
in that region. The Germans were even at that 
time doing their best to obtain a monopoly of ho- 
tel keeping and coach driving in the Holy Land. 

243 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

We did all we could during the intervals of rain to 
study every place of interest in and around Jaffa, 
and we gathered much fruit, not unpaid for, in 
the orange gardens. Whatever might have been 
our complainings as to the weather, it was still 
something to find ourselves enjoying even an en- 
forced leisure in a region made sacred by so many 
associations. I may mention one incident of our 
stay in Jaffa which had something bordering on 
the comic in it, although at the time its burlesque 
effect was unknown to us. The day appointed 
for the opening of the Parliamentary session was 
approaching, and I was anxious to make it known 
to my colleagues that I hoped to be in London 
before the debate on the address in reply to the 
royal Speech from the Throne could have come 
to its conclusion. I therefore sent by submarine 
telegraph a message to one of the Whips of the 
party, telling him that I was unexpectedly detained 
in Jaffa, but that I should start on my way home- 
ward by the first available steamer. Through some 
mysterious process of transformation on its way, 
the message was delivered to my Parliamentary 
colleague as dated from Java, and I afterwards 
heard that it created for the time some bewilder- 
ment as to why I should have gone so far outside 
the range of travel which I was understood to have 
undertaken. 

After several days the violence of the storm 
lessened somewhat ; a steamer bound for Port 

244 



A WANDERING HOLIDAY 

Said came in sight, was promptly hailed, and was 
able to lie off at a considerable distance from the 
shore. We had to reach the steamer in an open 
boat rowed by native seamen ; the waves were still 
running very high, and on that dangerous coast the 
enterprise was sufficiently perilous to make us all 
frankly eager for its safe conclusion. Yet at one 
moment our perilous passage was threatened with 
a whimsical repetition. After we had cleared the 
rocks and were rising and falling in the furious 
waves, our dragoman suddenly startled us with 
shrill cries of alarm. He had bought some oranges 
on the quay just before embarking, and now dis- 
covered to his dismay that he was a few copper 
coins short of the change due to him. He began 
shrieking wild directions to the rowers to put the 
boat about and return to Jaffa with all speed, in 
order to collect the missing treasure. As, however, 
the prospect of a king's ransom would scarcely 
have tempted us to renew the perils we had yet 
scarcely escaped, we sternly forbade this retrogres- 
sion, and our dragoman, with despair on his face, 
resigned himself to the inevitable loss. We pur- 
sued our stormy course, and after what seemed 
an age-long time were safely hauled on board the 
steamer and were on our way to Port Said. From 
Port Said we returned to Cairo, where we stopped 
for a short while, and then sailed by a P. & O. 
steamer from Alexandria to Brindisi. 

At the Brindisi custom house we met with an 
245 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

incident which seemed to belong to the regions 
of the burlesque. I was provided of course with 
all the necessary passports, and I made it known 
of my own accord that I had in my possession a 
few cigars on which I was willing to pay the 
needed duty. There seemed to be much commo- 
tion at the custom house, and my declarations 
that these were all the cigars I had did not 
appear to satisfy the authorities. These authori- 
ties were evidently not much impressed by the 
disclaimers of a British deputy of Parliament, 
and they insisted on having the luggage of the 
whole party thoroughly ransacked for vast quan- 
tities of foreign tobacco. During this period of 
delay I heard from some friendly officials that 
the authorities had been on the lookout for the 
arrival of a mysterious consignment of cigars, to 
be smuggled through without paying duty, and 
that this consignment was to come in a P. & O. 
steamer, and they therefore set me down as a 
likely man to carry out such a fell design. At 
last, however, we got through, and were allowed 
to take the next train for Rome. During my jour- 
ney to Rome I accidentally heard that the wicked 
invader who had planned the smuggling of the 
mass of cigars had disguised himself in the cos- 
tume of a British merchant seaman, and while 
the officials were searching my harmless luggage, 
had actually contrived to get the rough bundle in 
which his cigars were quietly stowed away safely 

246 



A WANDERING HOLIDAY 

through the custom house without let or hin- 
drance from the authorities. 

From Rome I sent a wire to a colleague in 
London, and found that it was not necessary for 
me to make my return quite so precipitate as I 
had intended. We gave ourselves therefore the 
pleasure of a few days' rest in Rome, and saw once 
again scenes and sights, churches and art galler- 
ies, which we had seen many times before. The 
remainder of our journey was, except for a short 
stay in Paris, merely a direct and rapid return 
home. The travelling of that autumn and winter 
was the longest travel I have ever yet had — I mean 
for the mere sake of rest to the mind and enjoy- 
ment in the seeing of strange countries. I have 
had longer bouts of travel during my visits to 
America, but then in America my longest jour- 
neyings took the form of lecture tours, and had 
practical and business-like objects in view. But 
the autumn and winter which I devoted to travel 
in 1 88 1 and 1882 was done with no purpose but 
that of seeing famous places and giving a new 
turn to the thoughts and a new colour to the lives 
of my son and daughter and myself. 

I formed during our wanderings the idea of 
writing three novels, the first of which was to have 
its scene laid in Athens, the second in Constan- 
tinople, and the third in Jerusalem. In each case 
my intention was to shape the story so that it 
might describe the experiences of travellers from 

247 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

England or Ireland in these cities, and not to at- 
tempt an experiment which I knew was beyond 
my reach — the experiment to describe the lives 
and feelings of persons born and brought up in 
Athens or Constantinople or Jerusalem. I have 
already said that after my return to England I 
accomplished the first of my three projected sto- 
ries. I published " Maid of Athens " as a serial in 
a monthly magazine, and afterwards in the three 
volumes which then still made the regulation form 
of a novel. But the story about Constantinople 
and the story about Jerusalem have never been 
told, and have never been even attempted thus far 
by me. The increasing pressure of Parliamentary 
work compelled me time after time to put off 
to some indefinite future any literary enterprise 
which could bear postponement. I should have 
liked to accomplish the three stories; but I fear 
that if even by some strange chance I were yet to 
have leisure for the work, I should have to renew 
my impressions of the life of Constantinople and 
Jerusalem before I could venture to complete my 
enterprise with any hope of accomplishing good 
work. I have, however, one consolation to sustain 
me in the frustration of my enterprise — I can 
always tell myself that the Constantinople story 
and the Jerusalem story would have been, if only 
I could have found time to write them, much more 
meritorious productions than the one which I ac- 
tually presented to the world. We returned from 

248 



A WANDERING HOLIDAY 

our wanderings not very long after the opening of 
Parliament. A keen struggle, destined to be pro- 
longed for a considerable time, had already set in 
between the Liberal Government and the members 
of the Irish National party. The condition of Ire- 
land was of course the occasion for this struggle. 
We.the Nationalists,had expected great things from 
the new Liberal Administration under Mr. Glad- 
stone, which had been in power for some time 
before the date at which I have now arrived, and 
those expectations had thus far not been fulfilled. 
They had, in fact, been utterly disappointed. The 
land tenure system of Ireland had been making 
life almost unendurable to the cottier tenantry, 
and among the immediate results of these condi- 
tions were the alarming increase of emigration 
and the disturbed state of the country. No one 
could doubt that Mr. Gladstone's Government 
was anxious to introduce great reforms in the land 
tenure system, but in the mean time the energy of 
the authorities in Dublin Castle had been directed 
almost exclusively to the maintenance of what 
was officially described as order, instead of to 
the carrying out of the reforms which alone could 
have made order possible. 

The Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, 
in other words the Secretary of State for Ireland, 
was Mr. William Edward Forster, whom the Irish 
members had always regarded as a sincere and 
enlightened friend of their country. Mr. Forster 

249 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

had won for himself a high reputation as a genu- 
ine Liberal of the most enlightened class, a friend 
of peace, progress, and reform, and a sympathiser 
with Ireland's just claims for relief from the laws 
and systems by which she had been so long op- 
pressed. In his earlier days Mr. Forster and his 
father had personally rendered much service to 
the famine-stricken population of Ireland during 
those seasons of gloom and terror when the failure 
of the potato crop spread desolation throughout 
the island. I had known Mr. Forster during the 
days of my connection with the " Morning Star," 
and had always regarded him as an earnest advo- 
cate of the general policy of Cobden and Bright. 
Like all my political colleagues, I had welcomed 
the news of his appointment to the Irish ofifice 
as the opening of a new chapter in the history 
of Irish administration. But it soon turned out 
that our hopes were destined to be disappointed. 
I could never explain to myself the reasons why 
Mr. Forster's experiment in Irish administration 
turned out so complete a failure. It was impos- 
sible to believe that he had not meant well for 
Ireland, that he was not in full sympathy with her 
just claims, and yet his administration seemed only 
to m^ke things worse and not better day after day. 
The best conclusion at which I could or can arrive 
was that Mr. Forster must have become disap- 
pointed with Ireland even before Ireland had be- 
come disappointed with him. My theory was and 

250 



A WANDERING HOLIDAY 

is that when he accepted the Irish office he took 
it for granted that the Irish people in general 
would appreciate his purposes, and would feel sure 
that if they would only wait patiently and let him 
have his way, they would soon find the chapter of 
agrarian reform and political equality opening for 
them under his inspiration. I assume that from 
the moment when he settled down to his work in 
Ireland he expected to find the oppressed Irish 
tenants proclaiming a truce with their oppressive 
landlords, and waiting in absolute quietude for the 
coming of the good time. No such truce, however, 
was proclaimed or was likely under the conditions 
to be proclaimed, and then, according to my idea, 
Mr. Forster became disappointed with the Irish 
people, and could think of no better policy than 
that of forcing them to keep quiet while he pre- 
pared the way for better legislatipn. On the part 
of the Irish agricultural tenants it has to be said 
that the measures proposed by Forster's Govern- 
ment for the reform of the land laws did not seem 
adequate to the occasion and to the objects in view, 
and indeed all the later history of Ireland and of 
legislation for Ireland has only proved more and 
more convincingly how utterly inadequate those 
earlier measures were. The Irish agricultural 
tenants did not keep quiet, and could hardly have 
been expected to keep quiet. The struggle be- 
tween the tenant and the landlord was one for 
life or death so far as the tenant was concerned. 

251 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

" Live, horse, and you will get grass," is a proverb 
which illustrates effectively enough the spirit of 
the statesmanship which appealed to Ireland to 
desist from agitation and wait patiently for gradual 
reforms. The agitation went on as vehemently 
as ever, and Forster seems to have made up his 
mind to repress it by measures more peremptory 
and severe than had ever been tried before. Ire- 
land was subjected to the working of a whole sys- 
tem of exceptional legislation, by virtue of which 
Dublin Castle was enabled to deal in absolute and 
even despotic fashion with the liberties and the 
lives of men. 

I remember well that while I was travelling on 
the Continent I stayed at the Kaiserhof in Berlin, 
and it was there we heard for the first time that 
Parnell, John Dillon, Sexton, and O'Kelly had 
been arrested in Ireland and consigned to prison 
merely on the ground that they were " suspects " ; 
in other words that they were suspected of pro- 
moting disturbance and sedition. This was one 
of the new and exceptional acts by which it was 
thought possible to reduce Ireland to silence and 
passiveness while the Liberal Government was 
preparing measures to make things work more 
smoothly in the future. The disturbances in most 
parts of Ireland grew worse and worse through 
the working of this sort of legislation, and the 
feeling of the people turned, within a compara- 
tively short time, from confident hope into some- 

252 



A WANDERING HOLIDAY 

thing like despair. Forster seemed to have become 
for the hour a mere reactionist in poHtical prin- 
ciples, and, reversing the policy of John Bright 
when he proclaimed that for the ills of Ireland 
force is no remedy, was acting on the conviction 
that force is the only remedy. Of course the news 
of this strange display of Liberal administration 
made the Irish in the United States more than 
ever energetic in their appeals to their country- 
men at home not to submit tamely to the excep- 
tional laws which Forster was forcing on them. 

When I returned to the House of Commons, I 
found this new struggle between the Irish party 
and the Government in full operation. It was 
indeed something of a novelty for me to have to 
associate Forster with a system of exceptional and 
despotic legislation, of free speech prohibited and 
forcibly suppressed, of imprisonment without trial 
and without limit of sentence. I took part in some 
of the debates, and I could not help expressing in 
strong terms my surprise and disappointment at 
the course which such a man as William Edward 
Forster, the Forster of the past, had suddenly taken 
it on him to pursue. If I may be allowed to say 
something in my own praise, I think the best 
speech I ever made in the House of Commons — 
I do not say that it was a good speech, but only 
that it was my best — was made in reply to one 
of Mr. Forster's during a debate in that memora- 
ble session. The close of my speech was a decla- 

253 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

ration which at the time I felt justified in making, 
although it grieved me to have to make it, that, in 
paraphrase of some famous words, it had rarely- 
been given to any human being to do so much 
good for humanity as Mr. Forster had prevented 
in Ireland. 

The rule of the iron hand went on for a time in 
Ireland as before, and things only grew worse and 
worse. The end came, however, very soon. Glad- 
stone and the majority of his Cabinet determined 
to release the imprisoned " suspects " and to aban- 
don the policy of mere despotism, benevolent or 
otherwise, in Irish affairs, and the immediate result 
was that Mr. Forster resigned ofhce. Lord Cowper, 
who had been Viceroy of Ireland, also resigned ; 
but the world in general took less notice at the 
time of the Lord Lieutenant's resignation than it 
did of Forster's withdrawal from his nominally 
subordinate post. After that time I saw but little 
of Forster and hardly ever had any conversation 
with him. I have always regarded him as, accord- 
ing to the familiar saying, a good man gone wrong. 
I cannot but believe that when he first took office 
as Irish Secretary he had a great opportunity 
before him, and that he missed it mainly because 
he did not at a crisis of great difficulty, calling for 
much patience and much faith, remain true to the 
principles he had learned from great teachers, and 
had followed out manfully through the whole of 
his earlier career. 

254 



CHAPTER XV 

LIBERAL COERCION 

My family and I occupied for a short time a fur- 
nished flat in Grosvenor Mansions, Victoria Street, 
and I may say that Victoria Street was at that 
time almost altogether given up to private flats and 
offices, and there was not, I think, a single shop on 
either side of it. A glance at Victoria Street lately 
made me feel deeply impressed by its living illus- 
tration of the ravages of time and change. Then 
we tried for a while various lodgings in the St. 
James's quarter, and settled down for many years 
in a house in Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea, not far 
from the house in which Thomas Carlyle had 
lived. I was brought more and more into associa- 
tion with men who bore names eminent in politics, 
science, literature, and art. 

In literary life I knew many distinguished men 
and women, including Robert Browning, Thomas 
Hardy, Bret Harte, Henry James, Anna Cora 
Steele, Miss Braddon, Froude, Freeman, and 
Lecky. Among men of science I knew Thomas 
Huxley and Herbert Spencer. I have already 
spoken of some of the painters whom I knew, and 
my friends among actors and actresses included 

255 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

Henry Irving, Charles Wyndham, Ellen Terry, the 
Bancrofts, the Kendals, and John Lawrence Toole. 
Of all these distinguished men and women, and of 
many others whom I have known, I have already 
written a good deal in other books of mine, and I 
am not inclined to indulge in unnecessary repeti- 
tions at the expense of my readers. I mention 
certain names here only in this passing fashion as 
they serve to illustrate the story of my own life, 
and to tell how much it was brightened by the 
good fortune which brought me into association 
with such men and women. I have always felt and 
still feel that the events of my life — I mean of 
my private and personal life — which must ever 
give me the highest gratification are those which 
brought me into companionship with such leaders 
of intellectual thought, of political movement, of 
literature, science, and art. 

Coming back to my occupations in the House of 
Commons, I may say that Gladstone was already 
beginning to be regarded by most of us as a states- 
man destined sooner or later to show himself favour- 
able to the Irish national cause. He had already 
brought in and carried a measure for the reform 
of the Irish land tenure system, which, although 
it wanted much of the elements of complete suc- 
cess, was yet the first serious and statesmanlike 
act which had ever been passed for the abolition 
of an odious system of agricultural serfdom. For 
the time, however, we, the Irish National members, 

256 



LIBERAL COERCION 

had to expect measures of coercion from a Liberal 
as well as from a Tory administration, and we 
were brought into collision with Gladstone and his 
colleagues as often as with the leaders of the Con- 
servative party. We therefore carried on our sys- 
tem of obstruction as unreservedly and as aggres- 
sively towards the one party as towards the other, 
and I remember how strange it appeared to me 
when, on more than one occasion, we found our- 
selves in political hostility to John Bright, who had 
been the true friend of Ireland when she had hardly 
any other friend among the English representa- 
tives in the House of Commons. It sometimes 
went very much against the grain with me to have 
to join in such a struggle, but I thoroughly recog- 
nised the fact that the policy of Parnell was our 
only available means of compelling the House and 
the country to give at last a full attention to Ire- 
land's national claims. 

Unlike many of my colleagues, I had always 
felt a profound respect for the constitution and 
the history of the House of Commons. To some of 
my friends in the Irish party the House of Com- 
mons was merely one of the weapons of tyranni- 
cal oppression by which England was enabled to 
keep Ireland in servitude. It seemed to them 
only a part of the enemy's war machinery, and 
every course of action which could enfeeble it 
and render it helpless and even ridiculous was to 
them always deserving of sympathy and applause. 

257 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

I could not look at things from this point of view. 
I had always regarded the House of Commons, 
whatever might have been its defects and its short- 
comings, as a powerful agency in the development 
of constitutional and religious equality, and my 
main desire in public life was to see the establish- 
ment of such an institution in Ireland for the gov- 
ernment of the Irish people by the Irish people. 
The possibility of Ireland becoming a thoroughly 
independent state, a self-ruling republic, let us say, 
lying close to the shores of Great Britain, seemed 
to me to be so far outside the range of human vi- 
sion as not to call for serious consideration in days 
like ours. If the world ever becomes so enlightened 
and civilised that small countries like Ireland are 
allowed to maintain their independence without 
let or hindrance from great and powerful neigh- 
bouring states, then, indeed, I admit that patriotic 
Irishmen might well give themselves up to the effort 
for Ireland's absolute independence. But I could 
not see any prospect of such a condition in human 
affairs, and I should have been content with a com- 
promise which should give to Ireland the entire 
management and control of her own legislation, 
while she yet remained a member of the British 
Imperial system. 

John Bright in one of his great speeches de- 
clared that if Ireland could be loosed from her 
moorings in the Atlantic and floated over to the 
American shore, she would probably become pros- 

258 



LIBERAL COERCION 

perous and thoroughly contented as a State of 
the Union. But, as he pointed out, the essential 
trouble in the condition of things was that Ireland 
had been placed in such close proximity to Great 
Britain that it was hardly possible to hope she 
could be allowed to become and continue an inde- 
pendent State. Bright always affirmed that the 
duty of the English Parliament was to give to 
Ireland such systems of internal government as 
Ireland would have given to herself if she had 
accomplished a successful revolution. In his later 
days Bright refused to support the Home Rule 
movement, but I have never thought that in that 
refusal he was acting inconsistently with his for- 
mer opinions. He was opposed to the idea of sep- 
arate Parliaments for the two islands, just as he 
was opposed to the idea of a separate Parliament 
for Scotland ; but he held to the principle that 
the Irish representatives in the Imperial Parlia- 
ment should be allowed to deal with Irish mea- 
sures, as the Scottish members are now and have 
long been allowed to deal with Scottish measures. 
I have always felt that this end could never be real- 
ised in the Imperial Parliament, where the Irish 
members constitute but a very small minority, and 
where they have not the influence and the advan- 
tage of such conditions of union as those which 
Scotland insisted on obtaining before she con- 
sented to give up her national legislature, and to be 
content with representation in the English Parlia- 

259 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

ment. My views for Ireland were and still are sat- 
isfied with the principle of separate legislation for 
the Irish people in a Parliament of their own, and 
I believe that if Home Rule were conceded to Ire- 
land, she might become as prosperous and as con- 
tented a partner in the Imperial system as Canada 
or Australia. To accomplish that end, I had be- 
come convinced that the system of obstruction, 
rough and ready as it might seem to be, was abso- 
lutely essential under all the conditions to com- 
pel the English people to give serious attention to 
the Irish national demands. Therefore I took 
my willing part in the carrying out of Parnell's 
policy, and I had my turn of being occasionally 
" suspended from the service of the House," — in 
other words, turned out of the representative 
chamber, — and of being occasionally called to 
order and bidden by the voice of the Speaker to 
resume my seat. It was not always very pleasant 
work for me, who had been for more than quar- 
ter of a century a resident of England, and had 
formed many close friendships and some rela- 
tionships there, and had been doing my best to 
win for myself a position in English literature and 
journalism. During these troublous times of ob- 
struction, I found that the intense feeling aroused 
among the general English public against the 
Irish obstructionists had a distinct effect on the 
sale of my books ; but I felt sure that this feeling 
would not last, and in any case it could not have 

260 



LIBERAL COERCION 

weighed for a moment with me when compared 
with the fulfilment of my duty to my own coun- 
try and her national cause. I was convinced that 
if Parnell's policy had a fair trial, it would accom- 
plish its object, and I am certain at the present 
moment that no other policy could have brought 
us so directly on the road to a recognition of our 
national claims. We had a rightful cause to plead, 
and I held so high an opinion of the just feeling 
of Englishmen in general as to believe that if we 
could only compel them to study that cause, they 
would be brought to recognise its justice. I knew 
that among many of my Parliamentary colleagues 
there had grown up, through the influence of gen- 
erations and centuries, a detestation of English 
rule which made them feel a gratification in 
the mere obstruction of England's Parliamentary 
work. With me obstruction was simply a means 
to an end, as I feel sure it also was with Parnell. 
I believed that the time must come when English 
public opinion would frankly admit that obstruc- 
tion had done good service for England as well 
as for Ireland, by compelling the attention of the 
ruling majority to the fact that the Irish minority 
represented a just cause, without the full recogni- 
tion and satisfaction of which there never could 
be genuine peace and contentment among the 
European members of the Imperial system. 

When the policy of obstruction was first put in 
motion, it had only a very small number of prac- 

261 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

tical adherents. For some time after I became a 
member of the House, only some seven or eight 
of us used to pass into the division lobbies under 
the leadership of Parnell. Even then we almost 
always had some three or four British represent- 
atives to go into the lobby with us every time 
that we made up our minds to divide the House. 
Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Joseph Cowen, and Henry 
Labouchere were always among our English sup- 
porters, and there were others too who gave us 
their friendly aid without heeding the denuncia- 
tion and misrepresentation which it brought upon 
them from many even of their own constituents. 
But the Irish National party soon came to include 
the great majority of the Irish representatives, 
and the idea began to be borne in upon the minds 
of English statesmen, and an intelligent minority 
of Englishmen, that Parnell was not practising 
his obstruction policy for the mere purpose of 
disturbing the British House of Commons, but 
that he had a genuine cause to plead, and that 
this was the only practical means of obtaining 
a hearing. All sorts of new rules were introduced, 
and were carried by majorities, to limit the free- 
dom of debate, or, in other words, to reduce the 
Irish National party to a state of impotence. In 
some instances the alterations of the rules were 
reasonable enough in themselves and were of 
some advantage to the general conduct of the 
business ; but it was pointed out again and again 

262 



LIBERAL COERCION 

with much justice that so long as there was an 
hostile minority in the House of Commons, — I 
mean a minority compelled by principle to take 
the part of united hostility to the majority, — it 
would be utterly impossible to prevent obstruction. 
Every member of Parliament must be assumed to 
have an equal right to speak on any question, and 
it would not be endurable that the Speaker should 
be permitted to determine beforehand that this or 
that particular member should never be allowed an 
opportunity of addressing the House. If, however, 
Mr. Speaker could not act on some such principle, 
it would be impossible to prevent any member 
from rising to prolong a debate at the time when 
the discussion seemed exhausted for all practical 
purposes, induce some other member to rise in his 
turn and offer a reply, and thus occupy hour after 
hour in purely obstructive discussion. The mem- 
bers of the obstructive party might, if they thought 
fit, take up different sides of the controversy, and 
so give some plausible excuse for keeping up 
the debate. One member of the obstructive party 
might speak in condemnation of some particular 
measure or clause, and when he had exhausted his 
argument on the subject a colleague of his might 
get up and express his great surprise at the views 
just made known by his honourable friend, and 
go on to confute them with yet greater prolixity 
than his honourable friend had employed in setting 
them forth. Then a third obstructionist might 

263 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

rise and express views of his own differing from 
utter condemnation of the measure on one hand 
and unlimited approval of it on the other, and so on 
until the whole obstructive party had spent their 
forces in what might plausibly be represented as 
fair, independent, business-like discussion. The 
Speaker could hardly rise and interpose to prevent 
any one particular member from continuing the 
discussion merely because he belonged to a party 
which had often obstructed, and thus, although 
each member spoke for but comparatively a short 
time, and the differing views of the orators pro- 
claimed no concerted plan of action, the regular 
business of the House might be most effectively 
delayed and thrown out of gear. 

I remember one remarkable instance in which 
a great Prime Minister gave an entirely new and 
most tempting opportunity to the obstructive party 
to exercise their policy. An Irish National mem- 
ber was making a speech which gave great offence 
by its tone and its evident purpose to the occu- 
pants of the Treasury bench, and Mr. Gladstone 
himself got up and moved that the honourable 
member be no longer heard. Now it appears that 
the motion made by Mr. Gladstone was absolutely 
in order, although the occasions were very rare 
when such a motion had been formally made. It 
was not likely that Mr. Gladstone would propose 
any motion not within the limits of Parliamentary 
order ; but the exercise of this right has always 

264 



LIBERAL COERCION 

been limited to occasions when the member against 
whom it is directed is making allegations or utter- 
ing sentiments which are believed to be a positive 
offence against Parliamentary usages. Mr. Glad- 
stone's motion was accepted by the Speaker as in 
order, and a debate upon it took place at once. 
During that debate one of the Irish Nationalist 
members invited the attention of the House to the 
new impulse to obstruction and the new opportuni- 
ties for the working of the obstructive policy which 
were given by the action of the Prime Minister. 
The Irish member reminded the House that a 
Prime Minister has no especial privilege for mak- 
ing such a motion, and that a similar motion could 
be made just as well by any other member of the 
House. At any moment an Irish National mem- 
ber would be at liberty, following the precedent set 
by Mr. Gladstone, to interrupt the orator address- 
ing the House and to move that he be no longer 
heard, and thereupon would set in an extempo- 
raneous debate. When that question had been 
disposed of and the regular business of the sitting 
was again going on, another Irish member might 
rise and move that some speaker then addressing 
the House be no longer heard, and thereupon 
would arise another debate and another division. 
Where was the rule of order to prevent or to limit 
this method of obstruction? If the motion was 
in order when made by the Prime Minister, how 
could it become obviously or constructively out 

265 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

of order when made by a private member? I do 
not now remember what came of the whole dis- 
cussion, but I know that Mr. Gladstone's action 
was hardly ever imitated by any other member 
of an administration, and that the House would 
have been put into new difficulties and troubles if 
the Irish party had made his motion a precedent 
and an authority for an entirely new development 
of obstruction. 

The lesson taught by the whole incident was 
that Irish obstruction could only be thoroughly got 
rid of by the fair consideration and the statesman- 
like removal of Irish national grievances. The 
Irish obstructive party knew full well that they 
had behind them the entire and the undeviat- 
ing approval and support of the vast majority of 
Irishmen at home and abroad. With such a force 
encouraging them and cheering them on, it was not 
likely that they could be deterred from their efforts 
by any number of temporary exclusions from the 
precincts of the House. The results speak for them- 
selves. With the recognition by English states- 
men that Ireland had genuine grievances of which 
to complain, and with the resolve displayed by 
Conservatives and Liberals alike to consider those 
grievances and find the means for their removal, 
the obstructive policy of the Irish Parliamentary 
party came to an end. It had done its work, and 
these words form its epitaph and its vindication. 



266 



CHAPTER XVI 

HOLIDAYS IN IRELAND 

My political occupations gave me many opportu- 
nities of revisiting Ireland, my native country. It 
became my duty to attend great public meetings 
in Ireland, to support the National candidates at 
bye-elections, and to assist in the formation of new- 
branches of the National league. All this involved 
a frequent rush of travel at night from Euston 
Square Station to Holyhead and thence across 
to Ireland, many a railway expedition into some 
out-of-the-way part of the country, and a rapid 
return to London, in order to take part in some 
important Parliamentary division. All this inter- 
fered very materially with the progress of my lit- 
erary work ; but I felt no inclination to evade my 
political duties, and it was ever a pleasure to me 
to revisit Ireland amid whatever hurry and excite- 
ment. No part of Ireland was strange to me; 
each spot that I visited brought up some interest- 
ing associations in my mind. It always pleased my 
thoughts to make a mental comparison between 
Ireland as I had seen her in the past and Ireland 
as I looked on her in the present, to note what- 
ever changes had taken place, and to see indica- 

267 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

tions wherever they were to be seen of political 
and social improvement. 

I had been possessed from my earliest days, and 
am still possessed, by what some of my friends re- 
gard as a mania for the associations of the past. 
At any time I should be prepared to go far out of 
my way merely for the sake of looking at some 
house or street or river which I looked upon in 
former days. My own belief is, that I should have 
made, if the powers above had so ordained it, a 
champion ghost, because of the inextinguishable 
delight I should always have found in transport- 
ing myself hither and thither among the scenes of 
my former experiences. When, added to this senti- 
mental feeling, I had a sense of being engaged in 
active work for Ireland's cause on Ireland's soil, I 
felt as if I was growing young again in the conge- 
nial atmosphere. I found myself more than ever 
an Irishman as I went with my new mission into 
so many once familiar places. I took part in many 
public meetings in Dublin ; I addressed audiences 
in my own native city, Cork ; I presented myself at 
great popular meetings in Limerick, in Waterford, 
in Belfast, and in Derry city. Much as I disliked 
the turmoil and the trouble of contested elections, 
it was something to know that a contest could 
only take place at that time against the recognised 
and traditional opponents of the Irish National 
cause, the Tories in the South and the Orangemen 
in the North, and I had my own friends around 

268 



HOLIDAYS IN IRELAND 

me wherever I went. Some years later there came 
an unhappy time when the division in the Irish 
party itself set friend against friend, and when, 
even in my native city, I found myself denounced 
by Irish NationaHsts, as sincerely devoted to their 
cause as I could be, who for the time had taken 
a side different from mine in the dispute which 
was distracting the National party. Of that I 
shall have to say something in a future chapter; 
for the present I am dealing especially with the 
period before any such dispute had arisen, and 
when in every contested election the Irish Na- 
tionalist members fought side by side. Wherever 
I went, if the work of speech-making and organ- 
ising allowed me a chance, I always found delight 
in visiting once again some spot made dear to 
me by old associations. I had some amusing ex- 
periences during the various contested elections ; 
but, on the whole, there was far less of disturb- 
ance and of vindictiveness than might have been 
expected under such conditions. The furious old 
days described by such writers as Charles Lever 
seemed to have passed away altogether, and there 
was much more of good humour in these Irish 
contests than I have seen in many English elec- 
toral struggles. 

During this part of my life I enjoyed a regular 
holiday tour in Ireland. My son and daughter and 
I made up our minds to forego for that year our 

269 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

usual visit to some part of the Continent, and to 
pass our time in Ireland. We were accompanied 
by a young English friend of my daughter, Miss 
Mabel Robinson, authoress since then of " Mr. 
Butler's Ward " and other successful novels. Miss 
Robinson had never been in Ireland before, and 
we were resolved that she should see as many as 
possible of Ireland's most beautiful historic scenes. 
We began naturally with Dublin, and we arrived 
there at a time of unusual interest. A monu- 
ment to Daniel O'Connell was to be unveiled in 
the great thoroughfare which had long borne the 
name of Sackville Street, but was thenceforward 
to be called O'Connell Street. I do not know of 
any city in Europe which can show a street more 
splendidly suited to set off a great public cere- 
monial. We were staying at the Gresham hotel 
in O'Connell Street, and had only to look from 
our windows in order to have a full view of the 
great national demonstration. I had never had an 
opportunity of seeing O'Connell during his days 
of power as leader and orator. I saw him but once, 
and that was towards the closing years of his life, 
at a time when his health had completely broken 
down and his voice was no longer equal to the task 
of making itself heard throughout any large assem- 
bly. Many of my readers will probably remember 
that affecting passage in Disraeli's life of Lord 
George Bentinck which describes O'Connell's last 
appearance in the House of Commons and the 

270 



HOLIDAYS IN IRELAND 

pathetic feeling created by the contrast between the 
feeble tones and the slow articulation of the speaker 
and the voice of magnificent music and power 
which used at one time to thrill the House. The 
one occasion when I heard O'Connell speak lives 
always in my memory. The great Irish Tribune 
was delivering an address to a number of youths of 
the Catholic schools of Cork, and the state of his 
health rendered it impossible for him to stand up 
during the few sentences which he uttered. He 
remained seated all the time, and in the farther 
part of the room we were hardly able to follow 
completely a single sentence. I can well recall to 
memory the kind of awe which came over us young 
lads when we thus tried to hear the great O'Con- 
nell, and I felt in a strange sort of way that it was 
something of a recompense to me for my disap- 
pointment on that occasion to find myself now 
taking part in the magnificent national tribute to 
O'Connell's career which the capital of Ireland had 
thus effectively organised. 

There were many public meetings and festivi- 
ties at that time, and a national exhibition of Irish 
products invited the attention of strangers as well 
as residents. Parnell was seen at many of these 
gatherings, and was then the most conspicuous 
figure wherever he went. Our friend Mabel Robin- 
son had the happy chance of seeing Dublin under 
conditions which peculiarly illustrated the national 
life in some of its most important movements. 

271 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

After leaving Dublin we went, like Dr. Syntax of 
old, in search of the picturesque, and one has not 
to travel very far in quest of the picturesque when 
he is wandering through Ireland. Of course we 
paid a visit to Killarney, and we spent many days 
in that enchanted lake country. I am myself an 
especial lover of lake scenery, and am well ac- 
quainted with the lakes of Cumberland and West- 
moreland, the Scottish lakes, the lakes of Switzer- 
land and Italy, and those exquisite smaller lakes of 
America which are not to be described as inland 
seas. But I do not think that the Lakes of Killar- 
ney would, on the whole, suffer by comparison 
with any of these that I have mentioned. Each 
lake country has, of course, its own peculiarities 
and its own atmosphere, and must therefore be 
judged upon its own conditions; but even when 
its skies are grey, I think the Killarney lake land 
has an enchantment of its own which needs not 
to fear any competition. I had been very familiar 
with Killarney during my days of newspaper work 
in Ireland, and had never been able quite to satisfy 
myself as to which of the three lakes had the 
greatest fascination for me. Now that I had come 
back to the old region of delight after an absence 
of many years, the lakes seemed to show them- 
selves to me as even more beautiful than my 
memory had pictured them. They bore with them 
now the charms of association as well as the fas- 
cination of novelty : the magic of the past and the 

272 



HOLIDAYS IN IRELAND 

present brought together and made one. Our 
English friend was especially charmed by the 
songs of the boatmen as they rowed us on the 
lakes, and with the manner in which they waked 
the echoes between the mountains. She enjoyed, 
too, the picturesque ride on horseback from one 
lake to another through the mystery-haunted Gap 
of Dunloe. She was charmed with the legendary 
store which the boatmen and the guides had al- 
ways at command for the instruction of strangers, 
and she took a peculiar pleasure in asking ques- 
tions of our escort and drawing forth their prompt 
and amusing or half-poetical replies. She was al- 
ready fast becoming a convert to the principles 
of Irish Nationalism, and we used to say that if 
her mind continued to improve at the same rate 
of progress, she would soon become more Irish 
than the Irish themselves. Then we wandered off 
to the west and travelled through the marvellous 
regions of Connemara, and studied ancient Gal- 
way, and lingered by lakes little known then to 
the ordinary tourist, but which hardly yielded in 
charm even to the Killarney lakes themselves, and 
along the banks of rivers which Spenser might 
have sung of with as loving a worship as that 
which he gave to the Blackwater. It was here that 
all the party except myself heard Gaelic spoken 
for the first time, and also heard the peasants 
who spoke English speak it obviously as a foreign 
language. Miss Robinson was greatly struck by 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

the natural and simple courtesy which the ordi- 
nary peasants on the roads displayed, and the will- 
ing trouble they took to direct us on our way or 
to tell us of any legends which hallowed each par- 
ticular spot. On one occasion, however, she was 
somewhat puzzled by an answer which the driver 
of a jaunting-car we had hired gave to a question 
propounded by her. He was telling us of some 
murders committed on the agents or bailiffs of 
landlords in a different part of the country, and 
she asked him whether such outrages never took 
place in the region through which we were then 
passing. He answered promptly and decisively, 
" Oh, no. Miss — not convanient here." What 
the poor man meant to convey was that no such 
outrages had taken place anywhere near to the 
part of the country we were now traversing, "con- 
vanient " being the familiar way of describing 
nearness to any particular place. She assumed it 
to mean that the people in the region we were 
then traversing did not find it convenient to shoot 
landlords there, because, perhaps, of the intrusive 
watchfulness of the authorities, but not because 
of any conscientious objection to murder. She 
was greatly amused when we explained to her the 
meaning of the poor man's expression, and made it 
clear to her that such was his meaning by decoying 
him into the use of the same phrase on other occa- 
sions during the drive. I have often thought that 
many a Saxon tourist might have founded a whole 

274 



HOLIDAYS IN IRELAND 

theory as to Irish character on such a misinterpre- 
tation of a local phrase, and that if Miss Robinson, 
afterwards a writer of novels, had been a tourist of 
the ordinary kind, she might have laid it down as a 
rule for the instruction of her English readers that 
an Irish peasant only disapproves of murder when 
the deed is likely to be attended by any personal 
inconvenience to himself or his friends. 

We paid a visit to Limerick, the famous city of 
the Violated Treaty, and wandered through all the 
beautiful scenery which surrounds the beautiful 
town. We spent a good deal of time in studying 
all those parts of the town and the surrounding 
country which are associated with Gerald Griffin's 
exquisite novel " The Collegians." We visited Gar- 
ryowen because it was the home of the ill-fated 
heroine of that sad story. I have always felt con- 
vinced that " The Collegians " is, on the whole, 
the greatest novel Ireland has yet brought forth. 
It is rich in native humour, and it is at the same 
time suffused with that peculiar and poetic mel- 
ody which seems to belong to the atmosphere 
and the music of Ireland. There are characters in 
it which for rich and genuine Irish humour are 
equal to anything ever created even by the best 
of the novelists who have given themselves up to 
depicting the merely comic sides of Irish life. In 
no other Irish novel that I know of are the different 
accents, phrases, and other oral peculiarities of the 
Irish provinces so clearly and correctly illustrated. 

275 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

In many an Irish novel the Connaught peasant 
frequently talks with the brogue of Munster, and 
even the Ulster man occasionally drops into some 
phrase peculiar to Leinster. But in " The Colle- 
gians " every peasant talks the talk of his own 
region, and has the ways that belong especially to 
it. Then there are scattered through the novel 
songs and ballads of the most exquisite poetic 
feeling, — songs and ballads which speak out the 
heart of the Gaelic race and carry music in their 
very words. It was therefore an especial delight to 
us to linger round every spot associated with the 
figures in that strangely humorous and strangely 
melancholy story. 

To most English men and women of recent 
days the story of " The Collegians " and of Eily 
O'Connor is associated chiefly, often indeed alto- 
gether, with the drama of the " Colleen Bawn " 
and the characters more or less created by Dion 
Boucicault. Now Dion Boucicault was a great 
actor and a thoroughly national Irishman, who at 
the very height of his popularity in London never 
made any concealment of his political sentiments, 
or of his admiration for Parnell, with whom I had 
the honour of bringing him into personal acquaint- 
anceship. But the story of " The Collegians " is 
no more to be appreciated through the medium 
of the " Colleen Bawn " than Scott's great romance 
" The Bride of Lammermoor " is to be appreciated 
through the opera of which Lucia is the heroine. 

276 



HOLIDAYS IN IRELAND 

It is a romance which must be read for itself, and 
perhaps, to be enjoyed to the very full, it ought to 
be read amid the scenery which it describes with 
such a vivid and sympathetic pencil. I shall 
never forget the pleasure with which I read Haw- 
thorne's " Marble Faun " in Rome, various chap- 
ters from " Don Quixote " in Spain, and some of 
the stories from the " Arabian Nights " in the 
older quarters of Constantinople or while floating 
in a boat along the Nile. I felt the same sort of 
pleasure in following the story, already familiar to 
me, of " The Collegians " in the city and suburbs 
of Limerick. That is a true saying of the great 
German, that they who the poet would understand 
must wander through the poet's land, and the say- 
ing applies to the poets in prose as well as to the 
poets in verse and metre. 

During our holiday wanderings we made many 
passing visits to Dublin. On one occasion our 
English travelling companion had the opportunity 
of seeing with us a very interesting and impressive 
public ceremonial. The occasion was that on which 
the freedom of the city was presented by the cor- 
poration to Parnell and John Dillon. The pre- 
sentation took place in the Mansion House, and 
during part of the ceremonial the recipients of 
this honour had to stand side by side on a public 
platform in sight of the whole audience while the 
address of presentation was read aloud to them. 
Now it is hardly possible to imagine any ordeal 

277 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

more difficult for a public man to go through in 
the peaceful ways of civilised life than to have 
thus to stand erect and motionless, an object on 
which all the spectators are sure to fix their gaze, 
while a long address to him is read aloud. John 
Dillon I should think must have found the ordeal 
especially trying. His unusually tall form and 
slender frame made the posture of motionless 
erectness one peculiarly adapted to try the nerves, 
and Dillon is by nature a modest man, who has 
little taste for becoming a central figure in any 
manner of public ceremonial. He got through it 
remarkably well, although those of us who knew 
him best could easily read in his face and even in 
his figure some suggestion of how he must have 
wished for the conclusion of this part of the per- 
formance. But we were all compelled to wonder 
at the manner in which Parnell adapted himself 
to the demands of the occasion. We all knew 
what a keen disrelish he had for being staged to 
the show in so conspicuous a position, and what 
efforts he was continually making to escape from 
bearing a prominent part in political pageantry of 
any kind. But on this occasion he appears to have 
risen to what I may call the pictorial needs of the 
hour, and he stood as immovable as a marble 
statue. During the reading of the whole address 
he maintained the same position, erect, calm, and 
graceful, never moving a limb, never showing the 
slightest evidence of nervousness, and yet not 

2^z 



HOLIDAYS IN IRELAND 

seeming like one who forces himself by mere 
strength of will to go unshrinking through a try- 
ing ordeal, not like one compelling himself to 
act out a prepared part, but with all the pleasing 
composure of a man to whom an artistic posture 
in front of a crowd is the result of lifelong train- 
ing. I have seen a great many public ceremonials, 
and have been present on various occasions when 
statesmen or soldiers or explorers or artists had to 
stand in front of a huge crowd and remain erect 
and silent while long addresses were being read 
out to them, and I must say that I never saw any 
other man who bore himself during such a trial 
with the same statuesque composure as that which 
Parnell maintained on that memorable occasion. 
We received much hospitality in Dublin, during 
our visits, from the civic functionaries and from 
political and private friends, and we had more 
invitations to dinner parties and receptions than 
we could possibly have accepted, even if our days 
were to be much longer in the land of the sham- 
rock. I am afraid that on one or two occasions 
we caused some disturbance to the minds of other 
tourists who happened to have rooms in the same 
hotel as we. This hotel had never, up to that date, 
been associated with the advanced National party, 
or indeed with any especially Irish party of what- 
ever kind. It was visited for the most part by 
tourists from England and Scotland, and its own- 
ers and managers went in rather for welcoming 

279 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

what may be called society visitors, and would by 
no means have cared to be looked upon as identi- 
fied with any manner of popular demonstration. 
It was, in fact, a particularly genteel hotel in the 
modern sense of that word, and it was only be- 
cause of our desire to be in the most convenient 
position for studying the great street ceremonials 
that we had selected this hostelry as our temporary 
home. We did not hesitate, however, to adorn 
the windows of our sitting-room by a display of 
green flags and other such proclamations of our 
sympathy and identification with the popular and 
the national cause. The managers of the hotel, I 
am bound to say, made a futile protest against our 
thus identifying some of their windows with the 
memory of O'Connell and the political principles 
of Parnell, and I believe that they were well 
pleased when the public processions came to an 
end, and there was no longer any occasion for the 
proclamation that we, Mabel Robinson included, 
were Paddies evermore, and were determined, ac- 
cording to the words of the famous national song, 
to back the Green against the Orange and to raise 
it o'er the Blue. I do not suppose that much regret 
was felt by the other occupants of the hotel or by 
its managers when, soon after the public celebra- 
tions, we took ourselves off to other parts of Ire- 
land. 

I have always looked back to that holiday spent 
in my native country as one of the bright chapters 

280 



HOLIDAYS IN IRELAND 

of my life. It was the first holiday, mere genuine 
holiday, that I have thus far had in Ireland. Of 
course I visited Ireland times without number 
afterwards ; but my visits with one exception were 
always on political business, taking part in county 
meetings or in contested elections, addressing 
great gatherings in the hall of the Rotunda in 
Dublin, and stirring up constituencies to prepare 
for some great coming struggle. Only a short 
time had to pass before my political colleagues 
suggested and urged that my son, Justin Huntley 
McCarthy, should come forward as a candidate 
for a seat in the House of Commons as represen- 
tative of an Irish constituency. He was perfectly 
willing and I was perfectly willing, and when a 
vacancy arose in the borough of Athlone he was 
elected unopposed as its representative. Thus the 
whole male strength of my immediate family was 
engaged in the service of Parnell and his party. 
My son continued to be a member of the Parlia- 
mentary party for several years, and only retired 
at last because the steadily growing strength of 
the Irish cause and the improvements effected 
in the franchise by more recent legislation had 
given us a secure possession of all but a compara- 
tively few among the Irish constituencies, and it 
was therefore no longer necessary for him to with- 
draw himself from that literary and dramatic 
career in which he was already beginning to make 
his way. I may say, however, that his sympathies 

281 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

with the Irish national cause remain just as warm 
and earnest now as they were during the days 
when he became the representative of an Irish 
constituency. I am going a Httle in advance of 
my record for the purpose of showing that when 
I spoke of my last holiday in Ireland, I did not 
mean to convey the impression that my most cher- 
ished associations with Ireland were those of a 
holiday-maker enjoying an idle trip. But that visit 
was pure holiday of the brightest kind, enjoyed on 
congenial soil and in congenial companionship. 



282 



CHAPTER XVII 

SOUTH, NORTH, AND WEST 

During the autumn of the year following that in 
which I had my holiday in Ireland, I went with 
my son and daughter to carry out a long-contem- 
plated visit to Spain. This was our first time of 
crossing the Pyrenees, and we were all intensely 
anxious to look upon some of the scenes which 
are especially endeared to the readers of books 
in every land by the adventures of Don Quixote. 
Disraeli, in one of his novels, has spoken of the 
strange thrill of delight felt by a traveller from 
some northern country when for the first time 
he sees a palm tree growing on its native soil. I 
think one experiences a feeling equally peculiar 
and equally delightful when, coming from some 
other country into Spain, he sees for the first time 
a windmill flourishing its arms over the soil where 
the Knight of La Mancha began his battle with 
the giants. Spain has so many historical, poetical, 
and romantic associations of the most splendid 
order that it seems like a sort of slight to her to 
speak of the windmills and Don Quixote as if 
they were her most characteristic charms for the 
foreign visitor. But for myself and my travelling 

2%z 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

companions I can say that the thought of Don 
Quixote was more with us when entering on 
Spanish ground than any of the memories be- 
lonffin^ to the Escurial or even Alhambra itself. 

From Biarritz we crossed the Pyrenees into 
Spain, and our first halting-place for a few days 
was found in Burgos. It came as a surprise to me 
that Spain should have looked such an extremely 
strange and new land to my eyes, although I 
had seen much of southern France. Passing from 
France into Spain was like passing from pictur- 
esque prose into old-world poetry. None of our 
party could speak Spanish, although some of us 
could make a fair effort at translation from a Span- 
ish book or from an article in a Spanish newspa- 
per, so in the large cities we found it convenient 
to engage the services of an interpreter. I am 
not sure that this did not give a fresh charm to 
our travels, because it made them seem more like 
wandering in some strange and mysterious land 
where English or French or German would have 
been of little use, and where we seemed to be 
among the regions of old romance. Once on a rail- 
way journey we were thrown into companionship 
wath two Spanish priests who were going our way. 
These kindly priests soon observed the interest 
which we took in every scene and spot as we rolled 
along, and were most anxious to call our attention 
to any points of historical or other attraction that 
we passed. They, however, did not speak English 

284 



SOUTH, NORTH, AND WEST 

or even French, and my efforts at Spanish were 
not such as to solve the difficulty. I suddenly be- 
thought me of the fact that priests of the Catho- 
lic Church can always be relied upon to speak 
Latin, and I drew upon the somewhat failing stock 
of my early studies in order to find a medium of 
conversation. The good priests were delighted to 
have even this approach to an interchange of ideas, 
but here again a new difficulty arose. Their pro- 
nunciation of Latin did not by any means come 
into kinship with mine, which, although it had 
begun at Mr. Goulding's school with something 
like the Italian pronunciation, had since by long 
residence in England grown to be in tone with 
that peculiar style diffused among English stu- 
dents by the University of Oxford. I am afraid, 
therefore, that our intercommunication was some- 
what slow and premeditated, and involved a be- 
wildering amount of repetition. Still my friends 
were able to give me some new ideas, and to arouse 
my interest in scenes and objects which we might 
otherwise have passed over without notice. There 
was to me something bordering on the romantic 
and poetic in thus trying to converse in Latin 
with two Spanish ecclesiastics as we travelled 
through Spain, and the mere fact seemed to add 
a new charm to the day's journey. 

The difficulty of keeping up the conversation, 
and the casual misunderstandings which now and 
then occurred, reminded me of another conversa- 

285 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

tion I had had under very different conditions 
and on a different subject with a Hungarian vis- 
itor to London. At the time when the House of 
Commons was discussing a measure for the im- 
provement of the Irish land tenure system, this 
Hungarian gentleman came to me with a letter 
of introduction from an English friend. The main 
object of his visit was his desire to be made ac- 
quainted with the bearings of the measure and 
the condition of things it was intended to remedy. 
The Hungarian spoke no English, and I need not 
blush to acknowledge that I could not discourse 
in the language of Hungary, so we had to carry 
on our talk in French. That would have been 
trying enough to me even under ordinary condi- 
tions, because I am not proud of my French ac- 
cent and have no opinion of my skill in speaking 
any foreign language, even French. But I have 
always felt more at ease when talking French with 
one who is not a native of France than with a 
born and cultured Frenchman. I should have 
retained my self-respect when speaking with my 
Hungarian visitor, because I could give myself 
the comforting assurance that his French was 
perhaps not very much better than mine. There 
came, however, the difficulty of explaining all the 
terms of the Irish Land Bill, all its technicalities, 
and the practical conditions of the land to which 
the measure was to apply, in a language not my 
own. I should have found it not an easy task to 

286 



S'OUTH, NORTH, AND WEST 

explain all the clauses of the Bill to an English- 
man not acquainted with the subject, and the 
reader can easily understand what a task it was 
to make my explanation clear in French. One 
point of especial difficulty made an unfading im- 
pression on my memory. My Hungarian visitor 
told me there was one condition belonging to the 
agreements between landlords and tenants as to 
the meaning of which he could form no conjec- 
ture. A certain phrase had been written down 
for him in English, and he had tried to translate 
it into French, but even when he had done so 
as well as he could, with the help of a dictionary, 
he still could put no meaning to it, and he had 
unluckily lost the sheet of paper on which the 
English words were written. This phrase he had 
rendered into French as "I'orage pendant," and 
he told me he could not make even a guess as to 
what the words might mean in the arrangements 
between an Irish landlord and his tenant. I was 
for a moment utterly bewildered, and kept mur- 
muring the words to myself again and again in 
the hope of finding out their mystic meaning. 
Suddenly a light flashed upon me. " L'orage pen- 
dant " meant " the hanging gale " — a term with 
which most of my Irish readers may even still be 
familiar, and which meant, in the time of their 
active application, that portion of a term's rent 
which was allowed by the landlord to hang over, 
that is, to remain unpaid until the end of the 

287 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

following quarter. That difficulty at least was 
promptly smoothed away, and I hope that my 
Hungarian visitor was not compelled to leave the 
House without gaining some insight into the con- 
ditions of that very complicated subject, the ques- 
tion of Irish land tenure and its much-needed 
reforms. 

This passing allusion to the Irish land ques- 
tion may come with a certain appropriateness into 
this short account of my visit to Spain. The Irish 
land question not merely followed me into Spain, 
but actually brought me back again before my 
projected time of travel was out. We were mak- 
ing our way steadily towards the south, and were 
already glowing with enthusiasm at the prospect 
of our approaching visit to Granada and the his- 
toric glories of Alhambra. Suddenly I received 
a number of urgent letters from colleagues and 
constituents advising me that some great meet- 
ings were to be held in Ireland, and especially 
in my own constituency, for the purpose of con- 
sidering and deciding upon the course the Irish 
party ought to take with regard to the land ques- 
tion and the land measures in the session of Par- 
liament which had been convened for the coming 
winter. I hope I do not want to exaggerate my 
claims to the character of a self-sacrificing patriot, 
but I think it will be admitted that to rush from 
Spain without seeing Granada was an act entitled 
at least to the reward of some internal self-com- 

288 



SOUTH, NORTH, AND WEST 

mendation. I felt, however, that it would hardly 
become a member of the Irish Nationalist party 
to keep on revelling in the enjoyment of a Span- 
ish tour while his countrymen and his own con- 
stituents needed the help of every one who had 
pledged himself to the support and responsibility 
of our common cause. We turned our faces north- 
ward, made our way through Spain and France to 
London, and were in good time for me to take part 
in the councils of my colleagues and in the meet- 
ings of my Longford constituents. We consoled 
ourselves on our way homeward by the assurance 
that, after all, our visit to Alhambra was only post- 
poned for a while, and that before long we should 
find an opportunity of studying at leisure the won- 
ders of those Moorish memorials which we had 
not been allowed to see during our first visit to 
Spain. Thus far, at least, our beguiling anticipa- 
tions have not been realised. Many a year is in 
its grave since that first visit to Spain, and I have 
never yet had time or opportunity to repeat my 
visit. " Farewell, my Spain, a last farewell," cries 
Byron's hero, — " perchance I may revisit thee 
no more." In my own case, I am rather inclined 
to put it the other way, and to say, " perchance I 
may revisit thee once more." But whether that 
hopeful possibility comes to pass or not, I felt 
that I was as much bound to hasten back to 
my Irish meetings, even though I left Granada 
unseen, as a soldier is bound to return to his post 

289 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

when the time comes for him to fall into the ranks 
once more. 

On our way home from Spain we made a short 
stay at Avignon, partly for the sake of looking on 
the Petrarch country, and partly with the wish to 
lay memorial flowers on the grave of John Stuart 
Mill. I have already told my readers that I owed 
my first encouragement to literary work, since my 
settling in London, to the generous appreciation 
of Mill, and I had always found him a kindly friend, 
and was an enthusiastic admirer of the services 
which he had rendered to many a great cause. It 
was but natural, therefore, that my son and daughter 
and I should go a little out of our way to pay our 
homage to his tomb. Mill had been in the habit 
during his later years of spending some part of 
every winter at Avignon, and it was there that the 
wife whom he so fondly loved died and was buried, 
and there still later he was laid by her side. It was 
in no spirit of mere formal hero-worship that we 
went through the ceremonial of laying flowers 
during our stay at Avignon on the grave of this 
great thinker who had been the friend of Ireland, 
and had understood her claims and her cause at 
a time when she had but few friends among emi- 
nent Englishmen. 

That bright holiday tour in Spain was the last 
of my holiday trips. I have made some long jour- 
neys since that time, but they had to do with poli- 
tical work or with lecture tours, and I have made 

290 



SOUTH, NORTH, AND WEST 

visits to health resorts, enjoined by medical order 
and by the need of rest, but my latest holiday tour 
so far was that delightful visit to Spain. 

Then set in the old life of struggle in the House 
of Commons, and the old endeavour to combine 
my literary work and my writing of leading articles 
with a steady attention to the exacting business 
of politics. I shall not attempt an historical survey 
of the progress made by the Irish movement in- 
side and outside the walls of Westminster Palace, 
and shall still regard this book of mine as a per- 
sonal narrative and not as either political or his- 
torical. After years of agitation out of doors and 
obstruction in the House of Commons, the Irish 
National party began to be recognised as a genu- 
ine political power, and the Irish cause forced 
itself on the attention and study of statesmen and 
others who up to this time had been inclined to 
regard it as a mere display of Irish turbulence and 
disaffection. Many leading English Liberals had 
been coming round to the belief that there must be 
something genuine in a national cause which could 
maintain itself in spite of so many difficulties and 
disasters. We could all see that Mr. Gladstone 
had long been coming round to this view of the 
crisis. An administration presided over by Lord 
Salisbury was turned out of office in the autumn of 
1885 in great measure by the help of the strong 
vote which Parnell and his party were able to give 
to the Liberal side at a critical division. 

291. 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

The General Election of 1885 brought about 
an interesting event in my political life. The Irish 
National party had long been anxious for a favour- 
able opportunity to contest some of the more 
important of the constituencies in Ulster. That 
northern province had been thus far regarded as 
the stronghold, in Ireland, of the Tory party and 
the Orangemen. The city of Derry had won quite 
a fame for itself as a Tory and Orange constitu- 
ency. Of late years, however, there had been a 
gradual but marked increase in the number of 
Derry electors who were resolute Home Rulers. 
Parnell and his colleagues felt that the time had 
come when we ought to make a fight for the re- 
presentation of Derry, Belfast, and other northern 
towns, and it was agreed that I should be the 
candidate chosen to contest Derry, — a decision 
which filled me with much gratification, not alto- 
gether unqualified by anxiety as to the result of the 
enterprise. I remember that my friend Thomas 
Sexton cheered me up by telling me that to win 
Derry would be to wear the blue ribbon of the Irish 
National party. Derry is a picturesque city alike 
in itself, in its surroundings, and in its historical 
associations. It is girt by famous walls some- 
what like those of Chester, and the visitor can thus 
enjoy a delightful promenade of inspection. The 
anniversaries celebrated by the Orangemen on the 
one side of political life and the Nationalists on 
the other were always looked forward to as certain 

292 



SOUTH, NORTH, AND WEST 

to be the occasion of rival demonstrations by no 
means limited to oral expressions of sentiment. 
When I got to Derry I found myself surrounded 
by a large party of supporters, and it was soon 
apparent to me that the organisation of the Irish 
National party there was strong and well managed, 
and that there was the certainty that we should 
at least make a good fight at the forthcoming elec- 
tion, and that, although we were not likely to win, 
we should give our antagonists hard work to do 
in the gaining of their victory. Derry was a very 
busy place during that contest. The streets were 
paraded frequently by processions with bands and 
banners, and the great danger was that a National 
procession might come into collision with an 
Orange procession, and that a fierce fight would 
be the result. I am glad to say that not much 
harm of this kind came to pass, but there was one 
day when a great disturbance seemed imminent, 
and for a short time appeared actually inevitable. 
My son, who had joined us after his election for 
Newry, my daughter, and I were witnesses of the 
threatened encounter as we stood at the windows 
of the hotel where we were staying. An Orange 
procession with band and banners was coming into 
the principal street from one direction, and there 
were heard the sounds of a Nationalist proces- 
sion coming to the same street from an opposite 
quarter. The intermediate space in the street was 
promptly occupied by a body of infantry with 

293 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

fixed bayonets, and the soldiers were so arrayed as 
to face the NationaHst procession when it should 
make its appearance. This it did even sooner 
than was expected, and for the moment it seemed 
all but certain that the Nationalists would hold 
their way until encountered by a bayonet charge 
from the soldiers. Then we saw a Catholic priest 
break through the crowd of spectators, rush in 
between the infantry and the advancing National- 
ists at the utter peril of his life, and with words 
and gestures now imploring, now commanding, 
endeavour to compel his fellow-religionists and 
fellow-Irishmen to fall back in peace. That was, 
indeed, a moment of intense and agonising un- 
certainty. Happily the brave priest succeeded in 
his gallant effort, the National procession halted 
in its march while the Riot Act was read, and 
the scene came to an end without the shedding of 
one drop of blood. I am glad to be able to say 
that only on that occasion did I see in my politi- 
cal campaigning in Derry city anything which 
seemed to threaten a really formidable and calam- 
itous disturbance of the public peace. There were 
many passing quarrels and many loud-voiced 
threats, there were many demonstrations of hos- 
tile and combative feeling, but except for this inci- 
dent I saw nothing that exceeded in violence the 
sights which might have been looked upon in 
those days at any ordinary English election. My 
daughter and I walked very often round the walls 

294 



SOUTH, NORTH, AND WEST 

of Derry and in the streets of Derry during that 
exciting time. We must have been well known to 
most of the Orangemen who crowded the streets, 
but on no occasion was there any demonstration 
of personal rudeness made towards us. The feel- 
ing among the Orangemen was, however, intensely 
strong, and it was manifested in one instance to 
no less a person than the distinguished Protestant 
Bishop of Derry, Dr. Alexander. The Bishop was 
a man of high culture, a distinguished scholar and 
author, and being Protestant Bishop of Derry, 
he was not much in sympathy with the cause of 
the Irish Nationalists. But he was a most kindly 
and hospitable gentleman, and saw no reason, I 
suppose, to display personal hostility towards me, 
whom, perhaps, as an author by profession he re- 
garded with a certain interest. At all events, my 
daughter and I received a kindly invitation to 
dinner at the Bishop's palace in Derry, and we 
were entertained there in the most friendly man- 
ner. The fact, however, that a Home Ruler and 
a Catholic had been invited to Dr. Alexander's 
house soon got known in the town, and on the 
following morning it was discovered that the front 
of the palace had been bedaubed with the word 
" Ichabod " in many places. 

My first contest in Derry had the result which 
most of us had fully anticipated. I was defeated 
by a majority of 29, but that majority was so small 
as not only to justify our enterprise, but to give 

29s 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

us the fullest hopes that we should have better 
luck next time. I made it known before leaving 
the historic city that I fully intended to try my 
chance another time and with every hope of being 
then successful. I cannot help saying with a par- 
donable feeling of gratified pride that the friendly 
crowd which accompanied me to the railway sta- 
tion was the most tumultuous and, for me, the 
most exciting demonstration I had seen since my 
recent entrance into Derry. It was with no little 
difficulty and no slight exertion on the part of the 
protecting friends who accompanied me that I 
was at last enabled to make my way to the plat- 
form through the cheering, hand-shaking, enthu- 
siastic throng who surrounded me, proclaiming 
their encouraging wishes for my speedy return to 
contest another election. It will be convenient for 
me to anticipate a little the story of my connec- 
tion with Derry city, by telling my readers that 
in the year immediately following we had another 
election owing to the resignation of the Liberal 
Ministry on the defeat of Gladstone's Home Rule 
measure, and I redeemed my promise by return- 
ing to Derry as the Nationalist candidate. In this 
latter attempt I carried with me a larger number 
of votes than at the former election. I was de- 
feated, indeed, at the polling, but only by a major- 
ity of three, and my Derry friends were convinced 
that some of the votes obtained on this occasion 
by my opponent would not stand the test of a legal 

296 



SOUTH, NORTH, AND WEST 

scrutiny. I presented a petition according to the 
usual form, claimed the seat as my own by right, 
and demanded an inquiry. The election petition 
went through the usual course, and it was found 
upon a scrutiny that certain of the votes on the 
other side could not be accepted, and that I had 
been elected by a small majority. I had, in the 
mean time, started on my American tour, and it 
was in the capital of New Brunswick that I re- 
ceived the gladdening news that I was the Na- 
tionalist member of Derry city. I had the honour 
of representing Derry for some years in the House 
of Commons. My Longford constituents had be- 
haved to me in the most generous manner. Dur- 
ing the General Election of 1885 I was reelected 
for Longford, so that my defeat in Derry left me 
still the representative of an Irish constituency. 
When I stood a second time for Derry in 1886, 
my Longford friends once again generously chose 
me as their representative, and it was left to me 
to choose which of the two I should represent. I 
chose Derry, for the obvious reason that the Long- 
ford seat was always safe for a Nationalist candi- 
date, while my retaining the Derry seat would 
give the National party an additional vote in the 
House of Commons. Some years later I stood 
for Derry a third time and was then defeated, but 
again my Longford friends came to my assistance 
and reelected me. Thus I merely ceased to be 
member for Derry in order to become once again 

297 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

member for North Longford, which I continued to 
be until the close of my Parliamentary career. 

Gladstone came into office, and soon introduced 
his first Irish Home Rule measure. The measure 
was not all that we, the Irish Nationalists, could 
have desired, but it was emphatically a step in the 
right direction, and we gladly welcomed it, if only 
because it recognised the national claim to a sep- 
arate Irish Parliament. 

The measure was defeated in the House of 
Commons because of a sudden secession on the 
Liberal side of the House ; a secession very much 
resembling that which had led to the defeat of Mr. 
Gladstone's Reform measure of 1866. The seces- 
sion of 1886 may be said to have had for its leader 
Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who had been for many 
sessions regarded by Parnell and the Irish Na- 
tional members as a thorough sympathiser with 
the Irish cause and the demand for Home Rule. 
Those of us who knew him personally had always 
understood him to be our confidential friend and 
political ally, and I well remember on that terrible 
Sunday when the news of the murder of Lord 
Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke in the Phoenix 
Park, Dublin, reached London, how Parnell and 
I went at once to call on Mr. Chamberlain, to 
consult him as to the best steps which the Irish 
party ought to take to repudiate in the most ef- 
fective manner on behalf of Ireland any national 
sympathy with that utterly detestable crime. The 

298 



SOUTH, NORTH, AND WEST 

secession against the Home Rule Bill proved too 
strong for the Liberal administration ; the Bill was 
defeated, Gladstone went out of office, a General 
Election took place, and Lord Salisbury came back 
to power at the head of a great majority. 

We had much to do in Ireland during all this 
time of political confusion, but we succeeded in 
keeping the country perfectly quiet and orderly, 
notwithstanding the terrible shock of surprise and 
disappointment which had been brought upon it 
by the Liberal secession and its immediate effect. 
The shock was all the more distressing for the 
Irish National party, because it had always been 
our great effort to prove to Irishmen at home and 
abroad that the great legislative reform we were 
endeavouring to bring about could be accomplished 
by constitutional agitation. One of our chief diffi- 
culties consisted in the fact that the more extreme 
representatives of the Irish national cause on this 
side of the Atlantic and on the other were con- 
vinced that nothing was to be got but disappoint- 
ment and failure from any constitutional and 
peaceful agitation. There were many Irishmen in 
the United States and Canada, thoroughly sincere 
and patriotic, who had no faith in any English 
party, would not trust the Liberals any more than 
the Conservatives, and were always telling their 
countrymen and the world generally that nothing 
could be done for the Irish cause except by means 
of an armed rebellion. I am not now speaking 

299 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

of men who could have felt any sympathy with 
the shooting of landlords, or with political assas- 
sination or mere wanton disturbance of any 
kind, but of sincere and intelligent men, who had 
especial influence over Irish-Americans and were 
convinced that Parnell and his party were wasting 
the energies and resources of their people on a 
futile effort. We knew that the defection of so 
many prominent Liberals from the policy of Mr. 
Gladstone would give a new and strong influence 
to the men of whom I am speaking, and would 
make their words sound only too convincing when 
they told their countrymen that Parliamentary 
agitation was foredoomed to utter failure. We 
were therefore most anxious that everything in 
our power should be done at once to prevent the 
growth of such a disastrous conviction among 
Irishmen at home and Irishmen in the United 
States and Canada. 

One of the arrangements made by Parnell and 
those with whom he took counsel was that I 
should go out to the American continent and 
carry to our countrymen there the message of the 
Irish National party, enjoining patience, hope, and 
full confidence in the ultimate and not very far dis- 
tant triumph of our constitutional movement. I 
had intended in any case to make another lec- 
turing tour in the United States, and I was proud 
indeed to carry the message of our Nationalist 
Parliamentary party to our countrymen across the 

300 



SOUTH, NORTH, AND WEST 

Atlantic and to the American public in general. 
My colleagues gave me a " send-off " in form of a 
farewell dinner in a restaurant in London. Parnell 
presided, and most of the Irish members then in 
town were present, and some ladies were guests, 
my daughter among the rest. I received many en- 
couraging words and good wishes on my approach- 
ing expedition, as the accredited envoy of the Irish 
Parliamentary party, and therefore of the Irish 
people. I remember in especial the words which 
were spoken by Parnell himself, John Dillon, T. P. 
O'Connor, Thomas Sexton, and many others who 
were entitled to be regarded as leading influences 
in the Irish National movement. So I started for 
the United States from Liverpool in the early 
September of 1886, and I well remember that my 
friend T. P. O'Connor came to Liverpool to see 
me off, and presented me with an elegant and 
commodious deck chair to be one of my comforts 
in crossing the Atlantic. 

The voyage to New York was made especially 
agreeable to me because it so happened that my 
friends Mr. and Mrs. Campbell- Praed were going 
to the United States by the same steamer, and 
there were no English friends of mine with whom 
I had been on terms of more close and genial 
companionship. Campbell-Praed died prematurely 
but a short time ago, and Mrs. Campbell-Praed, 
with whom I worked in literary collaboration for 
the production of more than one novel, still con- 
■ 301 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

tinues to increase her reputation as the authoress 
of books which receive the welcome and admira- 
tion of the reading public. Neither of my com- 
panions on this Atlantic voyage was in the least 
disturbed by any dread of sea-sickness, although 
it was in the season of the equinoxes, for both of 
them had crossed and recrossed broader seas than 
the Atlantic. So we had a very enjoyable time of 
it, although the winds sometimes blew their shrill- 
est, and the waves pitched our steamer about as 
if she were a plaything to be tossed into the air. 
We accomplished our voyage in good time, and 
on this my third visit to America I found myself 
welcomed on the landing-stage at New York by 
deputations of my countrymen as the envoy of our 
nation. So foreseeing and resolute were they in 
their preparations for my reception, that they had 
made arrangements beforehand for passing through 
my luggage with the slightest possible examina- 
tion at the custom house. Those who are ac- 
quainted with the ways of the custom house at 
New York will admit that I had every reason to 
feel grateful for this smoothing of my path. In- 
deed, when my welcoming countrymen found that 
I had two friends in my company, they contrived 
to have the same obliging courtesy extended to 
Mr. and Mrs. Praed, so that my two fellow-trav- 
ellers, utterly innocent of any share in a political 
mission, were exempted as well as I was from any 
minute inspection of their trunks and boxes. My 

302 



SOUTH, NORTH, AND WEST 

friend Campbell-Praed, although a stanch Con- 
servative in politics, so far as he was concerned 
about politics at all, was thus enabled to share 
some of the advantages of a representative of the 
Irish national cause and of the Parliamentary 
party, which, in the opinion of many highly re- 
spectable Englishmen just then, had for its object 
the utter overthrow of the British Constitution and 
even the foundations of Britain's Imperial power. 
My countrymen in New York had secured for 
me a fine suite of rooms in the Hoffman House, 
which then seemed farther up-town than it does 
at present, and they found there also rooms for Mr. 
and Mrs. Praed. I received many deputations 
during the opening days of my visit, and was enter- 
tained at a banquet given to me in the Hoffman 
House by some of my countrymen, at which many 
leading Americans who sympathised with the 
cause of Home Rule took a prominent part. One 
of the most brilliant of the Irish " rebels " of 1848, 
Richard O'Gorman, who had divided with Thomas 
Francis Meagher the honours of eloquence during 
the Forty-Eight movement, was at the banquet, 
and delivered a speech which must have won the 
applause of even the most critical audience for its 
splendid oratorical power, beauty, and intonation. 
There, too, I heard for the first time a speech from 
that master of after-dinner eloquence, wit, and hu- 
mour, Mr. Chauncey Depew, whom I have heard 
many times since that evening, and who always 

303 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

impressed me more and more by the charm of his 
fancy and his style. Another of the American 
speakers was Whitelaw Reid, whom I had known 
well during my former visits to the United States, 
who had now succeeded Horace Greeley, the 
editor of the New York " Tribune." There were 
many distinguished American clergymen and pub- 
lic men of various orders present, and all of them 
who took any part in the speaking expressed the 
warmest and most generous sympathy with the 
Irish national cause and the fullest confidence in 
the purposes and policy of the Irish National 
party. I had most assuredly every reason to feel 
fully gratified by the reception given to me as the 
representative of Ireland's claims, and I felt that 
if ever a man had begun a political mission under 
entirely encouraging auspices, I might regard my- 
self as thus commissioned to go on energetically 
with my work. 

The actual business of my mission began at 
a great meeting held in the Academy of Music, 
which was crowded to excess, and of course for the 
most part by sympathetic country people of my 
own. There was, however, a large proportion of 
Americans present, and some leaders of important 
political parties took their places on my platform. 
I had nothing more to do than to explain the ob- 
ject of my mission, and to make it clear that the 
Irish Parliamentary party and the Irish people 
were claiming nothing but their rightful share of 

304 



SOUTH, NORTH, AND WEST 

political independence, and that without the resto- 
ration of Ireland's National Parliament it would 
be utterly impossible that Ireland could prosper 
even so far as the mere material conditions of 
prosperity were concerned. The task was simple 
and straightforward, and the audience seemed to 
be thoroughly responsive. The meeting was well 
reported next day in the New York papers, and 
I could not have opened my speech-making tour 
under more promising conditions. 

On that tour I do not ask my readers to follow 
me. I have no intention of offering to them a 
detailed account of my journeyings up and down 
the United States and through a great part of 
Canada. I held meetings and delivered speeches 
in most of the great cities and towns of the United 
States, and in the principal cities and towns of 
Canada. I gave occasional lectures here and there 
on some merely literary subjects, but for by far the 
greater part of my time on the American conti- 
nent I acted as the spokesman of the Irish Par- 
liamentary party and the Irish national cause. 
Many changes had come to pass among those 
whom I had known during my former visits to 
the American continent. My brother Frank was 
dead and his children had grown up. His widow, 
a woman of many intellectual gifts and endowed 
with a sympathetic nature, was still making her 
way as a writer of bright and attractive stories. 
I saw much of her and her sons and daughter 

305 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

during my stay, for I had many return visits to 
New York, and she accompanied me on some of 
my journeys, one to Chicago among the number. 
Many of my old friends in Boston had left this 
life during the years that had intervened since my 
former American experiences. Emerson had died, 
and Longfellow, and others of that brilliant liter- 
ary set which made Boston famous. Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes was still living, and I saw him for the 
last time. On the other hand, I made some new 
friends, one of whom was the brilliant Irish author, 
poet, and orator, John Boyle O'Reilly, with whom 
I formed a strong and genuine friendship which 
lasted through the remainder of his life and is 
always with me as a memory. Another friend 
whom I met for the first time during that period 
was Edward Blake, then a leading and most dis- 
tinguished member of the Canadian Parliament, 
and now a leading and distinguished member of 
the Irish Parliamentary party in the House of 
Commons. I shall have to speak later on of the 
noble sacrifice Edward Blake afterwards made 
when, as a patriotic son of Ireland, he gave up his 
splendid position in the Dominion of Canada to 
help us during a great national crisis by becom- 
ing a member of the Irish party in the House 
of Commons. For the present I need only say 
that his kindness and hospitality in Canada must 
always be remembered by me with pleasure and 
gratefulness, and made the beginning of a last- 

306 



SOUTH, NORTH, AND WEST 

ing friendship. The whole lecturing tour occu- 
pied many months, and when it was drawing to 
a close my daughter came out to meet me, was 
received by the family of my late friend Cyrus W. 
Field in their New York home, and then joined 
me in Washington, where I had to address several 
meetings. We went from there to Boston, where 
we made some stay, and there my daughter met 
Oliver Wendell Holmes for the last time. We 
spent some days in New York, which we occupied 
chiefly in visiting my sister-in-law and her sons 
and daughter, and I may say that it was then I 
saw for the first time the brilliant American actress, 
Ada Rehan. Our last evening in New York was 
spent in Daly's theatre, where she was performing 
with unsurpassed artistic brilliancy and power 
Katherine in the " Taming of the Shrew " to John 
Drew's admirable Petruchio. I do not know that 
I could have found a more delightful way of occu- 
pying my last evening in the great city. I had 
every reason to be satisfied with the results of my 
speech-making expedition. I believe that I was 
able to render some service to the National move- 
ment, if only because it was well known to the 
American public that it was not my interest in 
any worldly sense to have identified myself with 
the advocacy of Home Rule. I look back on that 
episode of my life with the feeling that the time 
was well spent. 



307 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE PARNELL COMMISSION 

When I returned to my life in London, I found 
the Irish question still occupying as much as ever 
the attention of the House of Commons. The 
Conservative Government was giving itself up 
mainly to the introduction of yet more stringent 
criminal laws for the suppression of agrarian and 
political agitation in Ireland, and Mr. Gladstone 
and the leading Liberals — the Liberals who still 
accepted him as their chief — were joining with 
the Irish members in resisting this policy. There 
was a certain novelty in the situation for one who, 
like myself, had been absent for many months 
from Westminster. The Liberals were once again 
in cordial alliance with the Irish Nationalists, and 
the cordiality of their alliance was not merely 
political but social. For some time after Parnell's 
rise to power, it seemed to be taken for granted 
in English society that a Parnellite member of 
the House of Commons must be an enemy to all 
British law and order, and in fact a sort of social 
outcast, whom no respectable British citizen could 
possibly receive inside his doors as a guest. 

I may say that from the very beginning the 
308 



THE PARNELL COMMISSION 

English working-classes seemed to me, on the 
whole, to have clearly and thoroughly understood 
the character and the purposes of the Irish Nation- 
alist party. Even those English workingmen who 
had no personal acquaintance with the actual con- 
dition of things in Ireland found it probably quite 
easy to understand that the toilers on the soil of Ire- 
land might have been subjected to the domination 
of a ruling class which kept them down as mere 
serfs, working all day long for a bare living and 
treated with a scorn which made oppression still 
more bitter. English workingmen had no difficulty 
in understanding how the land question and the 
political question became parts of the same na- 
tional cause in Ireland, and how the Irish repre- 
sentatives who insisted that Parliament must be 
compelled, if necessary by obstruction, to listen to 
the story of Irish grievances might be regarded 
as the friends and not the enemies of England's 
best interests. We were always on cordial terms 
with the representatives of labour in England, 
and from such men as John Burns, for instance, 
we received nothing but sympathy and the most 
steady support. But it was quite otherwise for a 
long time with the classes who represent society 
in England, even where many of their leading 
men were in favour of reform in the Irish land 
tenure system and had come to recognise the case 
made out for Home Rule. Our obstructive tactics 
in Parliament had given the impression to most of 

309 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

these men that the Irish National representatives 
were merely a band of agitators who loved to dis- 
turb the House of Commons, partly for the fun of 
the thing, and partly to demonstrate their hatred 
of England. There had come about, since Mr. 
Gladstone had adopted the Home Rule claim, a 
complete change in the bearing of the English 
Liberals, and they offered their cordial welcome 
to the Irish National representatives. Some of 
our party never responded to the change in Lib- 
eral sentiment. Parnell himself never cared much 
for general society. He liked the companionship 
of his personal friends, and used to give very plea- 
sant little dinner parties to them and to accept 
their hospitality. But he was hardly ever to be 
seen at any of the English houses where Irish 
representatives were now to be met. Some others 
of our party still resented the feeling which had 
once been displayed towards them by the English 
Liberals, and declined now to accept a welcome 
which would not have been offered to them two 
or three years before. Most of us, however, saw in 
the changed conditions a fresh hope that English- 
men were beginning to understand the real claims 
and the justice of the Irish cause, and that a 
day was coming when Irishmen and Englishmen 
might be fellow-workers for the true interests, 
and therefore the common interests, of Great 
Britain and Ireland alike. There were some bear- 
ers of historic and illustrious English names who 

310 



THE PARNELL COMMISSION 

had from the first given their sympathy to our 
cause, and had seen that the Irish representatives 
were patriotic and self-sacrificing men. I may 
mention the names of the late Countess Russell 
and her daughter, Lady Agatha Russell, as among 
those of our very earliest friends in England. Lady 
Russell was the widow of Earl Russell, famous in 
modern history as Lord John Russell, and she had 
always understood the Home Rule question and 
appreciated the purposes and the motives of those 
who represented it. There were Englishmen like 
Sir Wilfrid Lawson and Mr. Henry Labouchere, 
who, during the whole of our obstructive move- 
ments, used to go with us into our division lob- 
bies, utterly indifferent to what might be said of 
them in most of the English newspapers. They 
were drawn to our side by their belief that we had 
a genuine cause to sustain, and that obstruction 
was just then our only means of compelling the 
House of Commons to give any attention to the 
pleadings of that cause. Until lately, indeed, we 
had regarded Mr. Joseph Chamberlain as one 
of our most resolute English allies, but with the 
introduction of Gladstone's Home Rule measure 
we had found ourselves compelled to regard him 
in quite a different light. It was evident to me 
when I returned from my American tour that a 
new chapter had opened in the history of the 
Home Rule movement, and that an Irish National 
member was henceforward to be a welcome as- 

311 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

sociate in the great progressive work of English 
politics. 

The House of Commons continued to make the 
same exactions as before on the time of those who 
belonged to the Irish National party. For session 
after session the House was mainly occupied with 
Irish affairs, and for the most part — indeed until 
quite recently — with measures for imposing fur- 
ther coercion on Ireland and devising new penalties 
against Irish agitation. For some time, however, 
we had had most of the English Liberal members 
working on our side and helping us to resist this 
policy of subjugation. The responsibility of keeping 
the debates going rested chiefly on the Parnellite 
members, and although we now showed ourselves 
a very considerable number, we could not venture 
to leave the House during any part of a night's 
sitting. English, Scotch, and Welsh members of 
whatever party could easily arrange for pairs, and 
thus get free for a sitting, or for several sittings, 
and at any time for the greater part of a night's 
debate. We felt that the whole burden of the resist- 
ance to coercion rested on our shoulders, and we 
could not run the risk of allowing any of our 
colleagues to absent himself from the scene of 
struggle. An English member who was given to 
humorous sayings once asked an Irish Nationalist 
to pair with him for the rest of the sitting. " In 
our party we never pair " was the answer of the 
Irishman. " But," rejoined the Briton, " if you 

312 



THE PARNELL COMMISSION 

never pair, how do you expect to increase the num- 
ber of your party ? " We never did pair in those 
days, but we did succeed in steadily increasing 
our numbers. 

We dined in the House of Commons dining- 
rooms while the House was sitting, and there were 
some of us who made it a point to dine always at 
the same table. That little group generally con- 
sisted of John Dillon, Thomas Sexton, William 
O'Brien, T. P. O'Connor, Edward Leamy, Mat- 
thew Bodkin, myself, with occasionally an English 
friend or two who made part of our group. My 
colleagues were all well-read men and brilliant 
talkers, and each seemed to have his own particu- 
lar vein of humour and wit. I do not know that 
I ever spent more delightful evenings than these, 
for all the turmoil of political strife that was going 
on, the incessant divisions which sometimes com- 
pelled us to leave the dinner table two or three 
times during the feast, and the occasional emer- 
gencies when one or another of us had to leave his 
dinner and hurry back to the House to take part 
in the debate. As the night wore on we often re- 
assembled in one of the smoking-rooms, and there 
resumed our talk and our interchange of ideas. Nei- 
ther at the dinner table nor in the smoking-room 
did the talk always or often concern itself with the 
political questions then engaging Parliamentary 
and public attention. We rather sought a relief in 
these social gatherings from political topics. We 

313 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

talked of books and theatres, and also indulged in 
much pleasant " chaff " and encounters of humor- 
ous cut and thrust. During the ordinary sittings 
of the House we often left the building after 
the day had dawned, and in the summer months 
we sometimes walked to our homes under the 
bright sunlight. Some of the most delightful recol- 
lections of my life are associated with these fre- 
quent episodes in our exacting, anxious, and often 
very dreary work as representatives of the Irish 
national cause in the British House of Commons. 
Soon came that new chapter in the history 
of the Irish Parliamentary movement which was 
opened for us by the publication of the famous 
Parnell forgeries in " The Times " newspaper. I 
do not intend to give here any description of this 
well-known and ghastly story ; I shall only touch 
on some few points which came within my own 
observation. I never to my knowledge saw Richard 
Pigott, the man who concocted the forged letters, 
although in his evidence before the Special Com- 
mission he deposed that he had had one secret 
interview or more with me. I had received from 
him before the publication of the forgeries sev- 
eral letters begging that I would help him with 
money, as he represented himself to be in great 
distress. I had often heard of Pigott before I got 
any of those letters, but I had heard of him only 
as a man whom all reputable Irishmen distrusted 
and avoided. I showed Parnell some of the beg- 

314 



THE PARNELL COMMISSION 

ging letters, and asked him whether Pigott was a 
man to whom the Irish party or any members of it 
ought to lend money, and Parnell strongly advised 
me not to allow myself to be drawn into any further 
correspondence with him ; for, as he quaintly put 
it, you cannot touch pitch or Pigott without being 
defiled. The begging letters themselves were not 
calculated to arouse sympathy or to awaken chari- 
table feelings, for they were extravagant and incon- 
sistent in their pictures of his distress, and he did 
not always remember in his latest letter what he 
had described as the main cause of his honoured 
poverty in some former epistle. I ceased to reply 
to any of his appeals, and until the forgeries were 
published I thought but little about him. When 
the forgeries were published in " The Times," — 
letters professing to be written and signed by 
Parnell, and implying a sort of sympathy with the 
Phoenix Park assassins, — I, like all the rest of 
my party, felt no more doubt as to their being mere 
forgeries than if they had been actually prepared 
under my eyes by some vulgar-minded jester as a 
passing joke. If any evidence as to their charac- 
ter were needed beyond their obvious absurdity, 
it must have been supplied by the bad spelling of 
the wretched forger ; for we all knew that from Par- 
nell's education and his precise ways of expressing 
himself it was impossible to suppose him capable 
of neglecting, in any haste, the laws of orthography. 
I have never been able to understand how men of 

315 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

education and capacity such as the managers of 
a great London newspaper could ever have been 
taken in by so preposterous a piece of work as 
these letters. I came to know afterwards, on the 
most certain authority, that the forged letters 
had been shown to more than one member of the 
House of Commons before they were carried to 
" The Times " ofHce, and that these members had 
at once declared them to be gross and palpable 
forgeries. It is certain that the editor and the 
manager of " The Times " must have been brought 
to believe that they were genuine documents and 
fully represented the secret purposes of Parnell. 
This is all the more strange seeing that the char- 
acter of Pigott was thoroughly well known in 
Dublin, and that the bitterest Tory in that city 
would never have accepted any statement on his 
evidence alone. A Conservative member of Parlia- 
ment, a thorough opponent of Parnell, told me 
that if an emissary from " The Times " had gone 
over to the Irish capital and asked the sentry at 
the gate of Dublin Castle, supposing he could have 
got into conversation with that personage on duty, 
what sort of a man was Richard Pigott, he must 
have received an answer which would have made 
him very cautious indeed about accepting anything 
on Pigott 's testimony. 

On the day when the letters appeared in " The 
Times," most of the Irish National members 
were in the House of Commons before the actual 

316 



THE PARNELL COMMISSION 

sitting began, and were exchanging ideas as to 
the origin of the letters, and as to the effect they 
were likely to have on English public opinion. 
Up to that time we, most of us, were inclined to 
regard the whole matter as a sort of absurd prac- 
tical joke, and we had not the least expectation 
that it could be taken seriously by any consider- 
able proportion of educated persons. Every one 
who knew Parnell knew perfectly well how utterly 
opposed he was to acts of violence in the carrying 
out of the National policy, and how absolutely 
he condemned all such acts as destructive of its 
best hopes and interests. Our only doubt that day 
was as to whether we ought to take any notice 
of the whole affair in the House of Commons, 
and whether it would not be more dignified on the 
part of Parnell and his friends to pass over the 
publication of the letters with contemptuous si- 
lence. However, as the time for the sitting of the 
House drew near, we began to meet with more 
and more evidences that many English members 
still believed anything to be genuine which ap- 
peared in " The Times," and that the letters were 
already creating a profound sensation. It seemed 
to us at last that it would be necessary for Parnell 
to arise at question time during the coming sitting 
and denounce the letters as forgeries, and we were 
anxiously waiting for his coming to offer him our 
advice on that subject. It so happened that on that 
particular day he was late in coming to the House, 

317 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

and had not appeared at the time when ques- 
tions were drawing to a close, and when, accord- 
ing to the usual arrangements of business, the 
proper opportunity would come for a member to 
arise in his place and offer any personal statement 
he believed it necessary to make. There was no 
time to communicate with Parnell, and we felt that 
something must be done. It was hurriedly ar- 
ranged among us that if Parnell should not come 
in time, Thomas Sexton must rise in the House 
at the proper moment and publicly stigmatise " The 
Times " letters as shameful forgeries. The mo- 
ment came, and Sexton arose and made his state- 
ment in tones of generous indignation. It was 
while Sexton was actually making his statement 
that Parnell entered the House and took his seat 
on the bench just behind him. As Parnell was 
sitting down, he heard Sexton denounce the letters 
as gross and shameful forgeries, and he at once 
announced his acceptance of that declaration by 
calling out loudly " Hear, hear ! " again and again. 
This was the first authoritative information we had 
received as to the origin of the letters, and I only 
mention the incident to show how little we needed 
our leader's personal assurance to convince us 
that he had nothing to do with their existence. 
Our feelings with regard to them were exactly the 
same as if "The Times" had declared that Parnell 
had been making a living by picking pockets, 
or that Parnell was not really Parnell, but an 

318 



THE PARNELL COMMISSION 

anarchist assassin passing himself off as an Irish 
National leader. Parnell made his own statement 
in due course, and it was welcomed and cheered, 
I am glad to say, by many English and Scotch 
members on both sides of the House. I am glad 
to say that one Conservative member, a distin- 
guished advocate and Queen's Counsel, said in 
the House, during the discussion, that from the 
moment when he read the letters in "The Times," 
he had regarded them as nothing but gross and 
monstrous forgeries. Many English and Scotch 
members came round to where Parnell was sitting 
and cordially shook hands with him, to show their 
belief in his honour and their sympathy with his 
feelings. 

The publication of the forged letters was, as I 
have said, the opening of a new chapter in the 
history of the Irish National movement. Many 
leading Conservatives and even some Liberals 
were strongly of opinion that even though the pub- 
lished letters should be proved to be palpable 
forgeries, there was still justification enough for 
holding a public and official inquiry into the whole 
methods and working of the Parnell agitation. 
My readers have already a general knowledge of 
the course taken by the Government wuth the ob- 
ject of instituting such an inquiry, and I am not 
engaged in writing the history of those events, 
but am only describing the impression they made 
upon me and how far I was personally concerned 

319 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

in them. A special commission was formed, by 
virtue of which three English judges were em- 
powered to hold a full inquiry into the methods 
of the Irish National movement under the leader- 
ship of Parnell, and to summon any witnesses 
whose testimony they thought essential, and if 
necessary to enforce their attendance and compel 
them to divulge all they knew. To put the matter 
plainly and divest it of all legal technicalities, the 
Government decided, with the assent of Parlia- 
ment, to put Parnell and his colleagues on trial 
as offenders against the public peace, and compel 
them to defend themselves against the charges con- 
tained in the indictment of " The Times " in the 
series of articles headed " Parnellism and Crime." 
The Commission was carried on in one of the regu- 
lar Law Courts, and there was a brilliant array of 
counsel on either side. The leading counsel for 
Parnell and his colleagues was that great advocate 
and high-minded man, my late friend, Sir Charles 
Russell, afterwards Lord Russell of Killowen. Rus- 
sell was an Irishman representing an Irish constitu- 
ency in the House of Commons, but though thor- 
oughly National in all his sympathies, he had never 
ranged himself under the leadership of Parnell. 

I doubt whether, since the impeachment of 
Warren Hastings, there ever was a more important 
and absorbing political investigation carried on 
before an English tribunal. I am convinced that 
the great speech of Sir Charles Russell for the 

320 



THE PARNELL COMMISSION 

defence of Parnell and his colleagues might have 
borne comparison with some of the great speeches 
of the men who arraigned the famous Proconsul 
of India. In the impeachment of Warren Has- 
tings the especial interest lay in the speeches for 
the impeachment, while in the trial before the Par- 
nell Commission the public interest was almost 
entirely absorbed in the speeches for the defence. 
The law officers of the Crown and the other 
learned counsel engaged with them had but little 
opportunity for the display of fervid eloquence 
when conducting the prosecution of the men ar- 
raigned before that tribunal. I remember think- 
ing that their hearts did not seem to be very much 
in the work, which mainly consisted in the endea- 
vour to make Parnell and his colleagues person- 
ally responsible for every violent deed done and 
every threatening word spoken during the past 
few years of the Irish National movement. Every 
wild speech of any Irish Nationalist at home or 
abroad seemed to be accepted by the Crown prose- 
cutors, as I may call them, as spoken under the 
direct authority of Parnell, and therefore a distinct 
part of the cumulative evidence against him. Every 
attempt on the life of a landlord or one of his 
agents in counties which had been for generations 
the scene of a continued civil war between landlord 
and tenant was put forward as direct evidence 
connecting Parnellism with crime. 

I could not help having a strong impression 
321 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

that some of the learned advocates for the pro- 
secution had but little respect for the sort of evi- 
dence which it became their duty to lay before the 
court in proof of the charges made against Par- 
nell. Everybody who knew the real history of the 
Parnell agitation must have known that Parnell 
had from the beginning of his leadership set him- 
self resolutely against every kind of violence, and 
that the heart and soul of his policy were guided 
by the firm belief that the Irish national cause 
could be carried to success by strictly constitu- 
tional action and with the House of Commons as 
the principal field of battle. Much of the evidence 
was purely historical in its character, and only went 
to show that ever since the passing of the Act of 
Union the great majority of the Irish people had 
been united in their demand for the restoration of 
Ireland's Parliament, and that during the same 
period there had been an intense struggle going 
on, a civil war in fact, between landlords and ten- 
ants in the agricultural districts of Ireland. The 
evidence was for this very reason full of public 
and historical interest, and it made out as clear 
a case as could be made for the intervention of 
the English Parliament to put an end to a state 
of things which had been denounced by Grattan, 
denounced by Daniel O'Connell, denounced by 
Isaac Butt, and denounced more lately by Par- 
nell. The very same evidence, if an opportunity 
had arisen, might just as well have been given in 

322 



THE PARNELL COMMISSION 

other days, in some instances had been given, to 
prove that Grattan and O'Connell and Butt were 
personally responsible for every act of violence 
and every incitement to rebellion which had taken 
place in any part of Ireland, and under no matter 
what circumstances, in the days when they were 
the leaders of the Irish national cause. But the 
interest deepened, and became more personal and 
acute, when the advocates for the Crown brought 
forward the various scraps of evidence which were 
intended to convict Parnell and some of his col- 
leagues of direct incitement to crime or hiring the 
services of guilty men to do wicked deeds. 

The inquiry lasted for a long time, and during 
the earlier months of its progress I attended the 
sittings of the court every day. To me the pro- 
ceedings were intensely interesting, although I 
could never help thinking that there was an air 
of unreality about the whole business. I saw that 
many of my colleagues were, in all but strictly 
technical terms, put on their trial on the charge 
of having incited or hired the commission of deeds 
which I knew that they were just as little likely 
to commit, approve, or encourage as any of the 
three learned judges on the bench. The theory 
of the prosecution seemed to be that if any out 
of the hundreds and thousands of men in Ireland 
or in England who belonged to Home Rule or 
tenant right associations could be shown to have 
committed an act of violence, it must be inferred, 

323 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

as a matter of course, that that particular act of 
violence was done under the authority and with 
the sanction of Parnell and Parnell's party. There 
were cases in which men who had for the time 
been employed by a branch of the Irish National 
organisation had afterwards been concerned in 
crime and had been brought to justice or escaped 
from the country, and the Crown lawyers seemed 
to argue that Parnell and his colleagues must be 
held responsible for their deeds. 

I had in my own case at least one curious illus- 
tration of this new and extraordinary principle. I 
was at that time vice-chairman of the Irish Par- 
liamentary party, of which Parnell was chairman, 
and I had in my charge the distribution of cer- 
tain funds required for carrying on our political 
work. One man who had been employed for some 
time as secretary of a branch of our organisation 
was afterwards suspected of taking part in a crimi- 
nal conspiracy, and I was called upon to explain 
how it was that I had ever supplied this man 
with funds. One of the charges made against us 
was that we were very careless in the keeping 
of our accounts. Much stress was laid upon any 
failure on our part to produce all books and docu- 
ments required, and it seemed to be held that the 
accidental loss of any such book or paper must 
be, in itself, evidence of a deliberate design to 
frustrate the ends of justice. I produced my bank- 
book and showed that the payments made to this 

324 



THE PARNELL COMMISSION 

man — payments merely for his travelling expenses 
— were all regularly recorded. It was pointed out 
to the court by our counsel that a member of Par- 
liament who was paying men to commit legal 
offences would not be likely to make his pay- 
ments through the medium of his ordinary cheque- 
books and to have them passed through the hands 
of his bankers. I believe I succeeded in making 
it clear to the court that I had not been concerned 
in hiring men to commit deeds of violence ; at all 
events, no further steps were taken to bring me 
to condign punishment. But the curious fact on 
which I particularly wish to dwell was that when 
the proceedings were all over, it appeared that one 
of my bank-books had somehow been lost, and it 
was never recovered. I had handed them in to 
the officials of the court publicly, during the open- 
ing sitting, in presence of the judges, the lawyers 
on both sides, and the crowd of spectators. One 
of my bank-books was lost and could never be 
found, and yet one theory of the prosecution was 
that where any important document belonging to 
the Irish party was lost, or said to be lost, that was 
in itself evidence of some guilty purpose on the 
part of those who once had it in their possession. 
I thought it a remarkably amusing comment on 
this principle, that the Commission itself had pub- 
licly obtained possession of one of my bank-books 
and had lost it. 

A large number of the Irish National members 
325 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

were called as witnesses during the sittings of the 
Commission, and were required to explain what 
they had meant by this or that speech ; when, 
where, and how often they had met this or that 
person, how they came to meet him, what he had 
said to them, and they had said to him. In my 
own case I was called upon to explain the nature 
of my dealings with all manner of Irish-Americans 
whom I had happened to meet once or twice at 
public assemblies during my late visit to the 
United States. 

We were all in much the same position. No 
distinct charges were made against us, but each 
man was called as a witness, and was expected to 
answer any questions put to him by the Crown 
advocates or by the court as to any passage in his 
public or private life. " Let us see if we cannot 
find out something about this witness which will 
connect him with crime as well as with Parnell- 
ism," seemed to be the underlying idea of every 
examination. It was a question of inference alto- 
gether, but the inference sought to be deduced 
was always to the discredit of the witness under 
examination. I think that except when men like 
Parnell himself were in the witness box, the pro- 
ceedings of a day's sitting must have seemed un- 
interesting and dull to the unconcerned listeners. 
But to those of us who might be said to be on 
trial, there was always a certain fascination in the 
business of the day. Some friend and comrade, 

326 



THE PARNELL COMMISSION 

for instance, whom one had known intimately for 
years, and had always known to be a man of per- 
sonal integrity and a high sense of honour, was 
closely examined by keen advocates, with the ap- 
parent object of compelling him to confess that 
he had become the conscious associate of outlaws 
and assassins. There was an irritating novelty 
about the whole performance which kept one's 
curiosity alive and active. During years of close 
association with Irish political life at times of 
great political and agrarian disturbance, it was 
hardly possible for an Irish National member of 
Parliament not to be brought now and then into 
casual intercourse with men who were afterwards 
convicted or at least accused of crimes. To hear 
such men as my habitual associates in the Irish 
Parliamentary party thus put metaphorically to 
the torture, in order that a full confession might 
be extorted as to their association with this, that, 
or the other person believed to be treasonable or 
otherwise criminal, was a very painful experience 
sometimes, but it could hardly be described as 
commonplace or uninteresting. We were all quite 
aware — I may speak for my colleagues as well as 
for myself — that we had planned nothing, had 
incited nothing, had done nothing, which could 
bring us within the reach of criminal law, and yet 
here we were, one after another, put in the witness 
box, to be probed by counsel as to when and how 
often we had met such and such a man, why we 

327 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

had met him, what we had said to him and he to 
us, and so on through hour after hour of specula- 
tive cross-examination. I suppose the proceedings 
must have had some interest for unconcerned ob- 
servers, because the court was crowded every day 
and there were always a large number of ladies pre- 
sent. There was, however, a growing feeling of sat- 
isfaction among all who sympathised with us and 
our cause in the fact that the whole mechanism 
of inquiry was able to bring out nothing which 
the world did not know well already — the fact 
that the Irish National movement under the lead- 
ership of Parnell was a constitutional and legal 
movement, intended for nothing but to bring 
about Home Rule and a reform in the system of 
agricultural tenure by peaceful and Parliamentary 
means. 

One distinguished Englishman who attended 
the sittings of the court very regularly was George 
Meredith, then and now the foremost living Eng- 
lish novelist. George Meredith, whom I have the 
honour of numbering among my friends, was in 
sympathy with the Irish national cause, and was 
acquainted with some of its leading representa- 
tives. He had not, indeed, so far as I know, ex- 
pressed a preference for any particular form of 
Parliamentary agitation or scheme of reform in 
the relations between Great Britain and Ireland. 
But he was in sympathy with Ireland and recog- 
nised that there was an Irish national cause, and 

328 



THE PARNELL COMMISSION 

he followed the work of the Commission Court 
with close attention and deep interest. He had 
obtained a seat close behind the benches occupied 
by the leading advocates on both sides ; and when 
it became generally known among members of the 
bar that George Meredith was so near to them, 
his presence in the court excited an amount of 
interest among these legal gentlemen which was 
at once a credit to them and a well-merited tribute 
to him. Many distinguished men in no wise con- 
cerned with its actual business were to be seen 
now and then among the general audience, but 
they were for the most part men who had some- 
thing to do with Parliament and politics. But the 
appearance of George Meredith, the philosophic, 
romantic, and poetic novehst, with his handsome, 
thoughtful face and his impressive bearing, always 
seemed to me like a gleam from the world of 
art into the prosaic chamber of legal, formal, and 
often very commonplace investigation. There were 
many periods of the inquiry when a thrilling in- 
terest which sometimes had a tragic note in it was 
given to the inquiry, as on the day when Richard 
Pigott was cross-examined by Sir Charles Russell. 
But in the ordinary course of things the work of 
each day was monotonous and uninteresting, and 
I cannot but think that the presence of George 
Meredith must have been to many visitors their 
best reward for a day spent in the Commission 
Court. 

329 



CHAPTER XIX 

COMMITTEE ROOM FIFTEEN 

The winter wore on, and the Special Commission 
dragged its slow length along. My attendance at 
the court was, however, interrupted by an interval 
of several weeks. My son, who had been suffering 
from ill health, received medical advice which en- 
joined him to spend the winter months in Algeria, 
and there he and my daughter had gone a few 
weeks before the time at which my story now 
arrives. I was left alone in our London house for 
the first time during a long term of years, and I 
cannot say that I enjoyed this life of domestic 
solitude. So I made up my mind to spend Christ- 
mas time and some few weeks more in Algiers, 
and I applied to the Crown advocates and the ad- 
vocates for the defence to give me permission 
to leave England while the Commission was still 
going on. I found the Crown advocates quite as 
willing to grant me this permission as the advo- 
cates on my own side, and it was arranged that I 
should be set free from attendance at the court 
during the time for which I had asked. Evi- 
dently the advocates for the Crown did not believe 
that I was conscious of any heavy responsibility 

330 



COMMITTEE ROOM FIFTEEN 

to the criminal law, or that my trip to Algeria was 
only a pretext by which I hoped to take myself 
out of the reach of an extradition warrant and so 
secure myself against being brought to the bar of 
justice. 

I left the country on parole, if I may put it so, and 
started on my expedition. I went direct to Paris, 
spent only one night there, and next morning took 
the train for Marseilles. That much of the jour- 
ney was not unfamiliar to me, and I can remem- 
ber that I beguiled most of my hours in the train 
by reading over again, and not even for the second 
time, " Our Mutual Friend." I suppose that any 
one with a properly balanced mind would, if he 
thought it judicious to read for hours in an ex- 
press train, have read something which fitted in 
with the scenery or the historical associations of 
the country through which he was travelling. But 
I had come across " Our Mutual Friend " by chance 
just as I was leaving London, and thought I could 
not beguile my journey more agreeably than by 
studying once again a novel to which I think that 
even Dickens's warmest admirers have not always 
done justice. For myself, I am inclined to rank it 
among the best of the great master's novels, and 
I enjoyed it more than ever during this day of 
foreign travel. I can now never hear the name of 
" Our Mutual Friend " mentioned without finding 
that journey from Paris to Marseilles brought 
back vividly to my memory, and without seeing 

331 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

myself in the railway carriage, bending over the 
pages of the delightful novel. 

I crossed from Marseilles to Algiers and had 
in every way a satisfactory passage, but it seemed 
very long to me, for the good reason that I was 
eager to get within sight of my son and daughter 
again. They were on the shore to receive me, and 
I Was gladdened to find that, all things considered^ 
they were in good health and spirits. I took up 
my quarters with them at the Hotel Mustapha, in 
the Mustapha quarter of the city, and we devoted 
ourselves to a study of Algiers and all the places 
of interest in its neighbourhood. I was not able, 
even here, to indulge myself in a complete holiday, 
for I had brought with me a short novel which I 
had then in hand, and was bound to complete 
within a definite time. So I did a fair amount of 
literary work every day, and the rest of the time 
we devoted to seeing the sights. There were many 
English and American families then either living 
in Algiers or on a visit there like ourselves, and 
I formed some friendships which are living for 
me at the present day. One singular experience 
which I had during my Algerian visit seems to me 
well worthy of mention. There was an English 
lady who had long settled down to life in Algiers 
and was devoting herself mainly to the teaching 
of children, and after that to the culture of bees 
and flowers. This lady turned out to be a friend 
of my wife, who had acted as her bridesmaid on 

332 



COMMITTEE ROOM FIFTEEN 

the day of her marriage, and whom I had not 
seen from that day until the time of our first meet- 
ing in Algiers. Our marriage took place at a 
provincial town in the north of England, where 
the bridesmaid was then living. After our return 
to Liverpool we had only heard of her from time 
to time, and when we settled in London, later 
on, we were told that she had left England alto- 
gether. A whole lifetime of mental growth, expe- 
rience, and emotion had been passed through by 
me between the day when I first saw this lady and 
the day on which I came to meet her in her Alge- 
rian home. We had much to say to each other 
about the changes which had taken place in that 
long interval. 

I enjoyed my stay in Algiers very much, al- 
though the climate somewhat disappointed me. I 
had got it into my mind that an Algerian winter 
must be very like an Egyptian winter, and I was 
not prepared for occasional torrents of drenching 
rain, or for fierce winds howling through thick clus- 
ters of trees. But the scenery was beautiful ; the 
sea, whether rough or smooth, was ever glorious to 
look upon; there was much sun and blue sky; and 
the city of Algiers itself, with its strange agglom- 
eration of various nationalities and national pe- 
culiarities, was always intensely interesting. Still 
working at my unfinished story, I yet found time 
to make notes of scenes and sisjhts around and in 
Algiers, which I intended to use as materials for 

333 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

a novel to be constructed with that region for its 
ground. This was my one and only attempt to 
work at a story with the assistance of preliminary 
notes. I accomplished many pages of notes, but I 
never accomplished and never even attempted the 
novel. It remains on the shelf, metaphorically that 
is to say, with my romance about Constantinople 
and my romance about Jerusalem. It therefore 
did not even decide the question whether I could 
work more successfully as a novelist with or with- 
out preliminary notes. 

These references to novel-writing remind me 
that I had an opportunity in Algiers of renewing 
my acquaintance with Miss Rhoda Broughton, the 
novelist, who was making that pleasant region her 
home for the winter. I was not able to make my 
stay extend very long in Algiers because I was 
anxious to be once again in attendance at the 
Commission Court, where, as I had reason to be- 
lieve, some very important evidence was soon to 
be taken. I spent but a few weeks altogether in 
Algiers, and then returned to London with my 
son and daughter. I reached London in time to 
come in for the events which brought to a close 
the career of Pigott, the informer. Everybody 
knows how Pigott completely broke down under 
the terrible cross-examination to which he was 
subjected by Sir Charles Russell, and how by his 
way of spelling certain words out of a number of 
which Russell called upon him to write down, he 

334 



COMMITTEE ROOM FIFTEEN 

identified himself with the misspelling contained 
in the first of the forged letters ; how he fled from 
the country to Spain and took refuge in Madrid, 
and how when the Spanish police came to seek 
him there in order to execute a warrant issued for 
his arrest under the Extradition Treaty, he closed 
his wretched life by suicide. His act of self- 
slaughter was not needed to satisfy the Commis- 
sion Court and the whole world that the Parnell 
letters were forgeries. Before his flight from 
England he had actually confessed to Mr. Henry 
Labouchere, in the presence of the late George 
Augustus Sala, and by an entirely unsolicited con- 
fession, that the letters were forgeries. It is only 
right to say that even before Pigott's flight the 
Attorney-General had publicly withdrawn the 
forged letters from the case, and had expressed 
his sincere regret that they ever had been pub- 
lished, or had ever been offered as evidence. After 
Pigott's suicide there was practically an end of 
the whole case. 

There is one event I must record which oc- 
curred at this time, — before the story of the 
Commission had come to an end, — John Bright 
died in 1889. 

It is one of the cherished usages of the House 
of Commons that when a distinguished member 
dies some spoken tribute to his memory should 
be offered by the leader of the Government, the 
leader of the Opposition, and the leader of any 

335 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

recognised Parliamentary party. When the sad 
news came of John Bright's death, it fell to my lot 
to say some words on behalf of the Irish National 
party. It was to me an occasion of the most pro- 
found melancholy. I had enjoyed Bright's friend- 
ship for many years, and the feeling of melancholy 
was made all the more profound because of late 
we had been divided on the great question of 
Home Rule for Ireland. Yet I could not but 
feel a certain relief to my sad thoughts in being 
thus allowed to speak out my full sense of all 
that Ireland had owed to him and to his friend- 
ship in days when she had few other friends 
among great English statesmen, and I thought 
it well that an Irish Home Ruler should say for 
his party and his country that the memory of the 
services John Bright had rendered was not in 
any sense effaced because he had not seen his 
way to accept the principle of Home Rule. I 
spoke only a few sentences, but their general pur- 
port was the expression of that feeling. When I 
had paid my tribute to the genius, the noble char- 
acter, and the public services of Bright, I went on 
to assure the House that Ireland was not so short 
of memory as to forget what Bright had done for 
her in other days, or so ungrateful as to suppress 
her sense of those past services because he had of 
late not gone the whole way in support of her 
national cause. Ireland, I said, still claimed her 
right to lay her immortelle, her funeral wreath, 



COMMITTEE ROOM FIFTEEN 

on this great Englishman's grave. I do not know 
how the speech impressed the House, but I know 
that it came from my very heart, and that no 
more sincere tribute could have been offered to 
the memory of a lost friend and an illustrious 
orator and statesman. I know too that I spoke 
with the voice of Ireland. 

In February, 1890, the report of the Special 
Commission was issued as a Blue Book and laid 
formally before the House of Commons. I shall 
never forget the extraordinary scramble which 
took place among members of the House for 
copies of that report when the moment came for 
their distribution. We could not wait to receive 
them in the ordinary course, but gathered in a 
crowd around the office, in the inner lobby, from 
which the slender volumes were to be issued. As 
there seemed no possibility of having anything 
like a systematic and decorous giving out of the 
volumes among so impatient a throng, somebody 
suggested in loud tones that they should be 
hurled out in heaps, and thus captured by those 
who could get at them. The suggestion was acted 
upon, and the volumes were showered forth over 
the heads of the nearest members, by whom they 
were either caught in their flight or competed for 
as they fell upon the pavement of the lobby. I 
have never seen a more amusing spectacle within 
the precincts of the House of Commons, or one 
more absurdly out of keeping with the historical 

337 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

and traditional dignity of that assembly. A crowd 
of children scrambling for apples or cakes at some 
holiday saturnalia could not have struggled and 
scuffled with greater eagerness and less regard 
for the dignity of Parliament than the members 
in the lobby struggled for their share of these 
important papers. I was lucky enough to secure 
two copies for myself, and I may frankly confess 
that I did not stop to consider whether I was 
or was not clutching more than my fair share of 
the distributed report. It is fortunate for that dig- 
nity of history concerning which Macaulay wrote 
with so much contempt, that the frescoes of the 
House of Commons lobbies have not been added 
to by a pictured representation of that scramble 
for the reports of the Special Commission. 

The report of the Commission was found to be 
satisfactory by the general public in Ireland as 
well as in England. The judges declared that the 
letters published in " The Times " as coming from 
Parnell and signed by him or written by him were 
forgeries. They found that neither Parnell nor 
any of his colleagues had supplied any one with 
funds in order to enable him to escape from jus- 
tice. They gave it also as their judgment that the 
charge of insincerity in the denunciation of crime 
and outrage had not been established in the case 
of any of the defendants who may be said to have 
been put upon their trial before the Special Com- 
mission. These were the only questions in which 

338 



COMMITTEE ROOM FIFTEEN 

the world in general took any interest. All that 
was made known by the evidence taken before 
the Commission outside these questions was al- 
ready perfectly well known to every one who had 
taken the slightest interest in the political and 
agrarian movement going on in Ireland. No one 
needed to be told that some inflammatory speeches 
had been made now and then during the course 
of either movement, that rough deeds had been 
done in the struggle between the landlords and 
the tenants, and that leading members of the Irish 
National League, some of them members of the 
Irish Parliamentary party, had been openly en- 
gaged in the preparations for the Fenian insur- 
rection. What the public wanted to know was 
whether Parnell and his colleagues had been 
guilty of planning or countenancing armed rebel- 
lion, whether they had been guilty of inciting to 
crime, whether they had been insincere in their 
professed denunciation of crime and outrage, and 
whether they had given money to help men to 
escape from criminal justice. On all these ques- 
tions the verdict of the Commission Court was a 
verdict of acquittal. 

The report of the Commission was received 
on the whole with much satisfaction by Parnell 
and his colleagues. We now felt quite secure that 
henceforward, whatever difHculties might come in 
our way, and whatever clamour might be raised 
against us, we should hear no more of Parnellism 

339 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

and Crime. I may remind my readers that when 
" The Times " was issuing its articles under the 
heading of " Parnellism and Crime," the Irish Na- 
tional members generally were not only willing 
but even anxious to submit the whole case to the 
decision of some authorised court of inquiry. Par- 
nell more than once publicly proclaimed his readi- 
ness to submit the whole case to the judgment of 
a Committee of the House of Commons specially 
chosen for the investigation. We all therefore felt 
quite satisfied with the course events had taken. 
Parnell brought an action against " The Times " 
to recover damages for the charges made against 
him, and " The Times " had to pay five thousand 
pounds as an atonement for what it had written. 
This action was only brought by Parnell as a 
means of obtaining a final and legal condemna- 
tion of the false charges which had been made 
against him by the newspaper which had accepted 
Pieott as its trusted source of information. Other 
members of the party might have brought similar 
actions ; but we all, or almost all, felt that enough 
had been done to clear our characters, and that 
the acquittal of Parnell was the acquittal of his 
colleagues. I have said "all, or almost all," be- 
cause there was, if I remember rightly, one mem- 
ber of the party who did bring an action against 
" The Times " on his own account ; but he was 
a somewhat eccentric personage, who was not re- 
garded with much favour as a political comrade 

340 



COMMITTEE ROOM FIFTEEN 

by Parnell or the party in general. The manner 
in which the House of Commons as a whole in- 
terpreted the report of the Commission was illus- 
trated most effectively by the reception given to 
Parnell when, after the close of the Commission, 
he made his first appearance there. Parnell came 
in rather late that evening and the House was 
crowded. The moment he made his appearance 
the whole of the Liberal party, then in Oppo- 
sition, rose up to welcome him, and many of the 
members on the Conservative side sprang to their 
feet and joined in the welcome. It need not be 
said that all the Irish National members stood 
up and bore their part in this remarkable demon- 
stration. The cheering was again and again re- 
newed. It was indeed a display of many feelings 
on the part of those who paid their tribute of 
respect to the leader of the Irish party. Men felt 
that however they might differ from Parnell in po- 
litical creed, he had been fully acquitted of unjust 
charges, and that it was due as well to themselves 
as to him that they should in this striking fashion 
express their honest sentiments. 

If the career of Charles Stewart Parnell had 
come to a close soon after that memorable scene 
in the House of Commons, it would have been 
better for his own fame and for the cause of his 
country. I need not tell in detail the story of the 
events which followed in his life and beyond ques- 
tion hastened his early death. I am not likely 

341 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

ever to forget one evening during a short visit 
of mine to Cannes, where I had gone to see an 
invalid friend. I was preparing to leave Cannes 
for London that night, and in the hall of the 
hotel I met an English clergyman with whom I 
was acquainted, who told me that Parnell had 
been made co-respondent in a divorce case. I 
had something to think of that night on my home- 
ward journey. The news was not altogether star- 
tling to me, for I had long known that some such 
event was likely to take place ; but there is always 
a sense of shock when we learn that a not unfore- 
seen trouble has actually come. When I reached 
London, I found that the news was only too true, 
and that the Irish Parliamentary party were thrown 
into utter confusion by the sudden opening of such 
a case at a time of critical importance to Ireland. 
The first resolve among us all was that we must 
stand by Parnell through the trouble. However 
we might deplore the fact that the scandal should 
have arisen, and might grieve to see the career of 
our leader and friend stained by a breach of the 
moral law, we could not but feel that it was only 
a sin of private life, which did not, according to ordi- 
nary experience, affect a statesman's right to act as 
the leader of a party and to strive for the cause of 
his country. We knew of cases in which English 
statesmen of high political position had been 
accused of like offences, and yet had not been 
regarded as necessarily unfit for the business of 

342 



COMMITTEE ROOM FIFTEEN 

political life. Many of us were of opinion that the 
best course for Parnell to take would be to keep 
out of public and Parliamentary life for a time, 
still retaining his position as leader of the party, 
and then, when he had done the justice that was 
in his power towards his partner in the scandal, 
and when the whole sensation had somewhat faded 
away, to return to his old place and his old work. 
An influential member of an English political 
party gave him by letter the brief and sound ad- 
vice — " Retire, marry, return." That was indeed 
the course which I fully believed at the time 
Parnell was likely to adopt. I felt quite sure that 
the moment he obtained the legal opportunity he 
would marry the woman whom he deeply loved 
and who deeply loved him. There were abundant 
evidences to convince us that Parnell's dearest 
wish was to become the husband of the lady. In 
fact, he offered no defence when the case came 
before the divorce court, and allowed the judgment 
of the court to go against him and her. I could 
not help remembering then that I was present on 
the occasion when Parnell and Mrs. O'Shea first 
met and became acquainted. It was at a luncheon 
party given in London by a near relative of Mrs. 
O'Shea, and I can well recollect that even at this 
first meeting of theirs I thought Parnell seemed 
greatly attracted towards her. From that time he 
became a frequent visitor at her house, and this 
was in itself remarkable, inasmuch as Parnell 

343 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

never cared about London society, and seldom 
went to a dinner party or a luncheon party except 
at the houses of his most intimate friends. For 
some time there had been a good deal of casual 
talk about Parnell's attachment to this lady, until 
at last those among us who knew him well began 
to fear that trouble would come of it. 

The only question for the Irish party to con- 
sider just now was as to the best course for Parnell 
to take with regard to the political crisis and the 
interests of the national cause. The country was 
on the eve of a General Election, and there was 
a fear arising among most of us that the scan- 
dal of the divorce court might affect injuriously 
the votes of Liberal electors in the approaching 
contest. We then looked to the Liberal party of 
Great Britain as our strength and support, and it 
was certain that if Gladstone should be once again 
in power, he would instantly bring forward another 
measure of Home Rule. But if the divorce court 
proceedings were to affect any large proportion of 
British Liberal voters so as to make them hesitate 
about giving their votes on the side of the Irish 
party still led by Parnell, it seemed only too likely 
that the national cause must suffer for the personal 
scandal. It was not, perhaps, to be supposed that 
any considerable number of British Liberals would 
vote against Mr. Gladstone merely because of Par- 
nell's offence, but it is always easy for a doubting 
elector to satisfy his conscience by keeping away 

344 



COMMITTEE ROOM FIFTEEN 

from the polling-booth on the day of the election. 
We all knew that the scandal would turn a large 
number of voters in England, Scotland, and Wales 
against Parnell, and without going so far as to say- 
in the words of Macaulay that nothing can be 
more ridiculous than the British public in one of 
its periodical fits of morality, we could not doubt 
that many a British voter would find a conscien- 
tious excuse for not giving any support to that 
Irish national cause about which he had at no 
time felt any particular enthusiasm. The crisis 
was made the more difficult for the Irish National 
members who were then in London because of 
the fact that several of our most influential and 
trusted colleagues, on whose judgment we greatly 
relied, were then unable to be with us. T. P. 
O'Connor, T. D. Sullivan, and T. M. Harrington, 
the late Lord Mayor of Dublin, were in the United 
States on a political mission. Mr. John Dillon 
and Mr. William O'Brien were out of England 
for another reason, and one of a somewhat pecul- 
iar nature. Ireland was then under a system of 
coercion, and the ordinary laws and the ordinary 
usages of the British Constitution did not apply 
to her. A man could be arrested and imprisoned 
for an indefinite time, if he delivered a speech in 
any part of Ireland which the authorities of Dub- 
lin Castle were pleased to regard as seditious in 
character. For a speech condemning the existing 
Conservative Government, which a man might 

345 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

have spoken at any public meeting in England, 
Scotland, or Wales, without the remotest idea of 
legal action being taken against him, he could in 
Ireland be instantly arrested and sent to prison as 
one suspected of seditious purposes. John Dillon 
and William O'Brien and some other distinguished 
members of our party were at that time under the 
ban of the exceptional laws, if they can be called 
laws, against seditious speeches in Ireland, and 
could not make their appearance in Ireland or 
even in England without facing the liability to 
instant arrest. Some of these colleagues had made 
a temporary abode in Paris or in Boulogne, and to 
consult with them it was necessary that Thomas 
Sexton and I should make several visits together to 
Boulogne as the nearest neutral ground on which 
we could take counsel with our friends. I am not 
likely to forget, and I think Sexton is not likely 
to forget, some rapid rushes we made in frosty 
winter weather to and from Boulogne for this 
mysterious purpose. 

The crisis was now approaching in London. 
It had always been our custom to reelect the 
chairman and officers of our party at the opening 
of each session. The session was near at hand, 
and on its opening day we held a meeting of our 
party in the since famous Committee Room No. 
15, and at once reelected to their former places 
Parnell and those of his colleagues who had held 
official position. This was in accordance with 

346 



COMMITTEE ROOM FIFTEEN 

the previous determination even of those who be- 
lieved that the best thing for the national cause 
would be that Parnell should absent himself from 
political life until the scandal of the divorce court 
should be in some degree removed or repaired. 
In the mean time Mr. Gladstone had become very 
anxious that Parnell should keep out of political 
life for the time, because he was strongly of opinion 
that if Parnell were to remain the active leader of 
the Irish National party during this crisis, the ef- 
fect upon the votes at the General Election would 
be disastrous to the chances of the next Home 
Rule measure. Mr. Gladstone was led to believe 
that there would be no difficulty in prevailing upon 
Parnell to adopt this course, because he well re- 
membered that, at the time of the Phoenix Park 
murders, Parnell wrote to him offering to resign 
his seat in Parliament if Gladstone thought that 
such a step just then would be advantageous to 
the national cause of Ireland. I had some conver- 
sation with Mr. Gladstone on the subject after the 
decision of the divorce court, and I could only 
tell him that I had not yet received from Parnell 
any intimation of his intentions on the subject. 
Gladstone was not by any means inclined to press 
on Parnell any such conditions, but there was great 
agitation among various Liberal bodies, especially, 
perhaps, Nonconformist bodies, throughout Great 
Britain, and many of Gladstone's leading col- 
leagues assured him that there would be no chance 

347 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

for the Liberals at the General Election if Parnell 
were to remain the active leader of the Irish Home 
Rule party. Gladstone's views on the whole sub- 
ject are given in letters of his which John Morley 
has lately published in his life of the great states- 
man. It is well to introduce here a passage of Glad- 
stone's letter to John Morley. " While clinging to 
the hope of a communication from Mr. Parnell, to 
whomsoever addressed, I thought it necessary, 
viewing the arrangement for the commencement 
of the session to-morrow, to acquaint Mr. McCarthy 
with the conclusion at which, after using all the 
means of observation and reflection in my power, 
I had myself arrived. It was that, notwithstand- 
ing the splendid service rendered by Mr. Parnell 
to his country, his continuance at the present mo- 
ment in the leadership would be productive of 
consequences disastrous in the highest degree to 
the cause of Ireland. I think I may be warranted 
in asking you so far to expand the conclusion I 
have given above, as to add that the continuance 
I speak of would not only place many hearty and 
effective friends of the Irish cause in a position of 
great embarrassment, but would render my reten- 
tion of the leadership of the Liberal party, based 
as it has been mainly upon the prosecution of the 
Irish cause, almost a nullity. This explanation of 
my views I begged Mr. McCarthy to regard as 
confidential and not intended for his colleagues 
generally, if he found that Mr. Parnell contem- 

348 



COMMITTEE ROOM FIFTEEN 

plated spontaneous action ; but I also begged that 
he would make known to the Irish party at their 
meeting to-morrow afternoon that such was my 
conclusion, if he should find that Mr. Parnell had 
not in contemplation any step of the nature indi- 
cated." 

Much discussion has taken place about the com- 
munication made by Mr. Gladstone to me, and 
the course I adopted with regard to it. I can only 
say that at the earliest possible opportunity I made 
Parnell acquainted with Mr. Gladstone's views and 
wishes, and I took some of my leading colleagues 
into my confidence on the subject. Our one great 
difficulty was to avoid impressing on Parnell the 
idea that Gladstone was assuming towards him 
something of a dictatorial position, which certainly 
was not in Gladstone's mind, but which, if too much 
pressure were brought to bear, Parnell might re- 
gard in such a light and be disposed to resent. 
Parnell just then was naturally in a condition of 
much excitement ; he was by temperament a ner- 
vous man, although he was almost always able to 
conceal his emotions, and at this time he was 
much disturbed and even distracted by the events 
then going on. Some of his colleagues in the Irish 
party and many of his supporters outside had, for 
a long time, been striving to fill his mind with the 
idea that the Irish National party was becoming 
too much dependent on the English Liberal lead- 
ers, and was, in fact, accepting the position of a 

349 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

mere hanger-on or vassal to English Liberalism. 
I felt that there was at least a possibility of Par- 
nell's taking a wrong view of Gladstone's inter- 
vention and resenting it as a sort of dictation. 
None the less I took care to make Gladstone's 
real purpose fully known to Parnell, and at first I 
had no reason to doubt that he put the true inter- 
pretation on it. Some of us urged that Parnell, 
when formally reelected as chairman of the party, 
should announce his intention to withdraw for a 
while from Parliament and public life, and that 
the management of the party should be entrusted 
to a committee of members, each of whom should 
be nominated by Parnell himself. But it soon be- 
came evident that Parnell was yielding more and 
more to the influence of a few members of the 
party and several advisers outside, and that he 
was growing to regard Gladstone's action as an 
interference with the independence of the party, 
and accordingly to resent it. I saw with much 
pain that this spirit was growing on him. For a 
while he saw but little of the colleagues with whom 
I was mostly associated, and it was not easy to 
come to any clear idea as to the policy he meant 
to adopt. 

Suddenly, however, Parnell told me that it was 
his intention to issue a manifesto condemning 
Gladstone, the Liberal party in general, the Brit- 
ish Nonconformists in particular, and the whole 
British public more or less, for a course of action 

350 



COMMITTEE ROOM FIFTEEN 

which he declared to be directed against the inde- 
pendence of the Irish party and the Irish peo- 
ple. He asked me to meet him at the house of a 
friend of his, a member of the Irish party, to hear 
the manifesto read before its publication and to 
offer my opinion as to the desirability of issuing 
it. I met him accordingly, and found that he had 
with him some few members of the party who 
had complained from the first of Gladstone's 
intervention. I objected to the manifesto alto- 
gether and point by point, and I did all in my 
power to prevail on Parnell to give it up. I 
assured Parnell of my strong conviction that if 
such a manifesto were issued on the authority of 
himself and the few colleagues who took his view 
on the subject, the result must certainly be an 
immediate break-up in the Irish National party. 
I pressed these opinions of mine as earnestly as 
I could on Parnell, and I reiterated my objections 
and arguments with a pertinacity which my party 
would have reckoned to my credit if we had been 
conducting an obstructive debate in the House 
of Commons. But all my efforts could get no fur- 
ther concession from Parnell than his consent to 
postpone the issue of the manifesto for twenty- 
four hours. During that short intervening period 
I saw Parnell more than once, and I believe some 
of my colleagues also saw him and tried to impress 
upon him their opinions, which were the same as 
my own. Nothing came of our efforts, and the 

351 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

manifesto was given to the world. The effect was 
conclusive, so far as the unity of the party was 
concerned, for the time. The large majority of 
my colleagues felt as I did, that we could not 
consent at such a moment to follow a leader who 
had, without any attempt to obtain the concurrence 
of the whole party, taken a step which seemed 
fatal to all the present hopes of the Irish national 
cause. 

The next chapter in that mournful history was 
supplied by the meetings of the party in Commit- 
tee Room No. 15. It may be well to tell some 
of my readers that it was then, and probably is 
still, the custom of the authorities of Westmin- 
ster Palace to allow to any recognised party in the 
House of Commons the habitual use of one of 
the committee rooms for the purpose of holding 
its business meetings. We of the Irish National 
party had long been allowed the use of Commit- 
tee Room No. 15, and it was in this room we met 
during many successive days to debate on the 
momentous crisis which had arisen in our politi- 
cal fortunes. I need not go over this painful story 
in detail. It was urged on Parnell by those who 
thought, as I did, that he should for the time keep 
away from the House and allow the business of 
the party to be conducted, as I have said, by a 
committee, of which he should have the nomina- 
tion. Parnell, however, refused to act on any such 
suggestion, and it soon became painfully evident 

352 



COMMITTEE ROOM FIFTEEN 

to us that some few of his colleagues were even 
more stern and bitter than he in hostility to our 
offered compromise. The debates naturally grew 
more heated as the days went on. Some news- 
papers afterwards published accounts of passion- 
ate scenes taking place in the committee room, 
and one journal, at least, went so far as to publish 
descriptions of violent encounters interrupting the 
debates. Perhaps I need hardly say that nothing 
whatever occurred in Committee Room No. 15 
which gave the slightest excuse for such grotesque 
misrepresentation. The debates were conducted 
on the whole without the slightest breach of de- 
corum and good order, and only in few instances 
did a speaker use words or make charges which 
could be regarded as personally offensive to any 
one at either side of the controversy. But we soon 
saw that there was not any hope whatever of our 
being able to prevail upon Parnell to reconsider 
his determination, and that any further discussion 
on the subject would be only a waste of time and 
temper. At that time I was still vice-chairman of 
the Irish party, and it seemed to me that I was 
bound to take the initiative in suggesting the only 
course now left open to the large majority of the 
party. I therefore rose and said that all further 
debate could only be useless or else harmful, and 
I called upon all who felt with me to follow me. 
My colleagues who thought with me readily adopted 
my invitation as the sole means of putting an 

353 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

end to an utterly futile debate. The great majority 
of the party left Committee Room No. 15 with 
me, and only a small group of members remained 
with Parnell. The Irish National party was for 
the time broken up. 



354 



CHAPTER XX 

"the return of the native" 

Then there followed an entirely new experience 
for me. Ireland had now become the scene of 
struggle between those who followed the majority 
of the Irish National party and those who held 
with Parnell. There were some bye-elections com- 
ing on in Ireland, and these gave a distressing 
opportunity for this trial of strength. Parnell set 
out to stump the country on behalf of the minor- 
ity of the party, and we had to follow his example 
and to maintain our own cause against him. After 
the close of the meetings in Committee Room 
No. 15, the minority of the Irish National mem- 
bers elected Parnell as their leader, while the 
majority held a meeting of their own and con- 
ferred on me the office of chairman. It was not 
a moment when even a much more ambitious man 
than I could have thought about gratified ambi- 
tion in this sudden elevation. The position to 
which I was raised was one of intense responsi- 
bility in every sense. To hold such a position at 
such a time threatened a most serious inroad on 
that literary work which was my chief enjoyment 
and my only means of making a living. But that 

355 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

was not the consideration which mainly occupied 
my mind during that distracting time. It seemed 
a cruel stroke of fate which compelled me to stand 
forth as the political opponent of Parnell, to whom 
as a leader I had long been most sincerely de- 
voted, and with whom I had had many years of 
intimate and steady friendship. I was also sud- 
denly brought into hostility with men like John 
Redmond and many others who had been col- 
leagues and close friends of mine for a long time, 
and whose motives, even in this crisis of political 
disruption, I thoroughly appreciated. I quite un- 
derstood why these men were upholding Parnell. 
They believed him to be the best leader the Irish 
people could have, and they could not see the 
rightfulness of withdrawing from his leadership 
because he had committed an offence against the 
laws of private morality. On this latter point we 
were all agreed, and those of us who formed the 
majority would never have thought of withdraw- 
ing from Parnell's leadership had it not been for 
the issue of that manifesto which we believed to 
be fatal to the immediate success of the Home 
Rule cause. We were, according to our convic- 
tions, putting the interests of the country above 
any consideration for the individual, while our 
opponents, it seemed to us, were, consciously or 
unconsciously, making loyalty to their country 
subservient to loyalty to the man. 

I could not but feel deeply the pain of any posi- 
356 



THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE 

tion which set me in direct antagonism to those 
whose action I had to oppose, but whose motives 
I felt bound to respect. I felt also my mind 
weighed down by a sense of the responsibility 
which I had to undertake when I accepted the 
position of a party leader in Irish politics. My 
long residence in England had not allowed me to 
keep up that continuous and intimate acquaint- 
ance with the political and agrarian condition of 
Ireland which was possessed by Parnell and by 
many or most of our colleagues, and I could not 
persuade myself that I was the man best qualified 
to hold such a place at such a time. At that 
moment, however, there seemed no other man 
ready to accept the position whose name would 
not have been likely to create difference of opin- 
ion, and union of opinion and action was essential 
to our work. I accepted, therefore, the position 
given to me, and was resolved to do the best 
I could for our common cause ; but there was 
most assuredly no feeling of gratified ambition 
in my mind as I entered on my new duties and 
was setting out with my colleagues for the party 
struggle on Irish soil. 

Then comes that entirely new experience to 
which I alluded at the opening of this chapter. 
We were to make our first great demonstration in 
the city of Cork. I was returning to my birthplace 
under strangely altered conditions. I had not lived 
in Cork since my early manhood, and although I 

357 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

had in recent years made my appearance there on 
pohtical platforms, it was always as the representa- 
tive of a great united National party, having the 
cordial support of the vast majority of the Irish 
people. Now I was about to present myself for 
the first time as leader of one division of that 
party in open antagonism to the other. I knew 
well that Parnell had an immense number of 
supporters in the city and county of Cork, and 
that although the Irish Catholic clergy were on 
the whole entirely with us, even their great influ- 
ence had not been strong enough to prevent a 
large proportion of Irish Nationalists from holding 
determinedly to the leadership of Parnell. Some 
words of Parnell's own, which spoke of his being 
thrown to the English wolves, had been caught 
up and repeated all over the country, and they put 
his position, as he would himself have desired to 
put it, with the most telling effect on the loyalty 
and devotion of his followers. There could be no 
doubt that I was now about to revisit my native city 
under conditions which must make me a most un- 
welcome and odious visitor to thousands of those 
from whom during my political life up to that 
time I had had nothing but the most friendly and 
cordial reception. I have always cherished a feel- 
ing towards my native city which highly practical 
observers might regard as merely sentimental, and 
my heart sank at the thought of having to be- 
come an object of dislike and hostility to so many 

358 



THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE 

of my fellow-citizens. Thoughts such as these 
occupied my mind a good deal as my daughter 
and I were making our way from Dublin to Cork. 
Several of my colleagues, among whom were 
Thomas Sexton and Arthur O'Connor, were go- 
ing with me. As we journeyed on southwards 
and the evening was growing late, I began to be 
filled with a somewhat ignoble hope that we might 
arrive in Cork at an hour after many of its popu- 
lation had gone to their homes, and that our com- 
ing might not have been made known previously 
to the inhabitants in general. But when our train 
stopped for a short time at Mallow Station my 
faint-hearted hopes received a sudden and com- 
plete discouragement, although it came from a 
kindly source. On the platform at Mallow were 
assembled some groups of residents, all of them 
sympathisers with our side of the political ques- 
tion, who had come to present us with an address 
of welcome and encouragement. This was a 
cheering event in itself, and I have no doubt that 
stouter hearts than mine would have been up- 
lifted by it ; but I am sorry to say that the first im- 
pression it made on my mind was the conviction 
that as we were expected in Mallow we must as- 
suredly be expected in Cork, where a very different 
sort of demonstration was likely to greet us. We 
all knew very well that we had an immense num- 
ber of sympathisers in Cork, but it was not likely 
to include many of that class of the population 

359 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

who would indulge in noisy and hostile demon- 
strations at the railway terminus. The journey 
from Mallow to Cork is not long, and when we 
reached the railway station of the southern city I 
found at once that my worst anticipations were 
on the verge of realisation. A large crowd had 
assembled on the platform, and from outside the 
precincts of the station itself we could hear the 
tumultuous groanings and hootings of a very much 
larger crowd, unmistakably assembled there for 
the purpose of giving us anything but a friendly 
welcome. On the platform something like order 
was preserved as we came out of the train, and a 
large number of friends and sympathisers, includ- 
ing several Catholic priests, came forward to re- 
ceive us and act as our safe-conduct. Some stal- 
wart priests were my escort to the omnibus which 
was to carry me to the hotel. I had only to step 
from the station into the omnibus, but even in 
that short time my identity made itself known to 
the crowd, and the moment I got into the omni- 
bus a shower of stones crashed against the win- 
dows and reduced some of them to shivers. One 
of the priests who got in with me was carrying 
a large cloak or plaid, and he earnestly recom- 
mended me to wrap this round my head and 
shoulders for protection, reminding me that if I 
got an injury it might make me unable to do any 
work during the Cork campaign, and also might 
bring discredit on the people of Cork, who did 

360 



THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE 

not deserve to be identified with the doings of a 
mere rowdy mob. I did not feel, however, that I 
could possibly assent to this kindly proposition. I 
could not reconcile my mind to the idea of the 
new leader of an Irish National party making his 
undignified way through the streets with a protect- 
ing cloak wrapped over his head and shoulders. 
The Spartan borne upon his shield might well be 
regarded as a picturesque and heroic spectacle, 
but the Spartan with his head mufiled in a cloak 
would be a sorry and grotesque sight. Nor did 
it seem to me that I could endure thus to enter 
my native city for the first time since my election 
to leadership, disguised by an undignified and 
ludicrous covering. So with the resolve of one 
who assumes heroic virtue if he has it not, I firmly 
declined the proposal to screen my identity and 
protect my head. We reached our hotel in safety, 
although we were followed for a great part of the 
way by a shouting crowd, who greeted their re- 
turning fellow-citizen with words of anything but 
welcome. Wherever we went during our stay we 
were liable to encounter, as we walked through the 
streets, demonstrations from the moving crowds 
which made it plain to us that the Parnellites 
formed a strong body in Cork, and that we had 
many frank and open-mouthed political opponents. 
We held a big public meeting in Cork, and a 
number of Cork's best citizens appeared on our 
platform and gave us all their support. The vast 

361 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

hall in which we held our meeting was crowded 
to excess, and although many Parnellites had se- 
cured admission, there was no disturbance of the 
proceedings. We passed our resolutions, made 
our speeches, and explained to my fellow-citizens 
our purposes, our hopes, and our justification for 
the course we had felt bound to take. Everything 
passed off quite as well as we could have expected. 
Whenever I speak of this meeting I remember 
an amusing thing which happened at it. A well- 
known Cork man was making a speech, and during 
it he expressed his regret for having to oppose 
Parnell, as he much admired him and had known 
him for many years. " I knew him," he said, 
" since he was in petticoats." " Ah ! " whispered 
a witty colleague of mine to a friend on the plat- 
form, " it would have been well if he had let them 
alone after that." 

As I have said, I could not cross a street with- 
out meeting with signs of disapproval from the 
crowds, and I therefore could not indulge myself 
in the fond belief that I enjoyed the entire sym- 
pathy of my fellow-citizens, and that my recep- 
tion was one of unalloyed welcome. I saw little 
or nothing of the city, and had not an opportunity 
even of looking at those loved and once familiar 
spots beside the river which were so constantly in 
my memory. When the time came for leaving the 
city and to carry on our campaign in other places, 
our departure gave me a new occasion for melan- 

362 



THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE 

choly reflection. We found the Cork railway 
station by which we were to depart completely 
guarded outside and in by a large body of consta- 
bulary under the command of the Chief Inspector. 
The platform might be described as practically in 
police occupation. The Chief Inspector was very 
gracious and polite, and shook hands with us as 
we got into our carriage ; but he called our atten- 
tion to the fact that he felt bound to see us safely 
in, and that he had thought it necessary to use all 
the precautions so evident to us in order to make 
sure that no breach of the peace could interfere 
with our departure. 

There is a charming old German ballad of a 
young man leaving his native town and going 
forth to seek his fortune in the wide world. The 
departing youth tells us that he wanders through 
the streets of the town unheeded by anybody, and 
that no one gives him that "Geleit" or friendly es- 
cort which makes so encouraging and sympathetic 
a farewell ; that nobody tore his coat while ten- 
derly trying to hold him back, and, indeed, he re- 
marks parenthetically that the poor old garment 
would have been much the worse for such a sign 
of affection ; and that no one bit his cheek in the 
too fervent effort to give him a last loving good- 
bye. The lines of the once familiar ballad came 
into my mind as we were leaving the Cork termi- 
nus that day. My trouble was of an entirely dif- 
ferent nature from that which made the hero of 

363 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

the ballad complain against fate. I had a very 
numerous and strong escort to see me safely out 
of the city, I was not allowed to saunter anywhere 
unheeded and alone, and this was precisely what 
constituted the melancholy of that parting. Yet 
I found a very different view taken by the writer 
of a leading article in one of the National papers 
entirely devoted to Parnell. The writer of this 
article was, I believe, a member of the Nationalist 
party in the House of Commons, and a great 
friend of my own up to the present time. His 
object evidently was to lay as much emphasis as 
possible on the devotion of the Cork crowds to 
the Parnellite side of the controversy, and yet to 
make the whole event as soothing to my personal 
feelings as possible. He began by extolling my 
exalted qualities of head and heart, and so forth, 
then described in eloquent and glowing words the 
admiration which every Cork citizen must and did 
feel for me, and finally pointed his moral by ask- 
ing the impartial reader to consider how profound 
must be in the mind of Cork the conviction that 
Parnell was right when even Justin McCarthy, 
when representing the opposite side, could receive 
but a cold welcome in the city of his birth. 

The article might have made me feel prouder 
than I had done as our train passed out of the 
Cork terminus, if I had not been sure that I could 
recognise the hand of the writer, and known that 
he sincerely wanted to make things as pleasant 

3^4 



THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE 

for me as they could be made under the condi- 
tions. I have a strong impression that the semi- 
military escort given to me came in great measure 
from the desire of the local authorities to magnify 
at once their own office and the danger they pro- 
fessed to guard against, and to make it seem that 
all Irish demonstrations on either side of the na- 
tional cause were sure, if not carefully guarded, to 
lead to scenes of violence. The majority of the 
Cork magistrates were either stanch Conservatives 
or ultra-loyal Liberals, and were glad of an op- 
portunity for giving further proof to the authori- 
ties of Dublin Castle that nothing but the whole 
strength of the police force could keep those Na- 
tionalists from murdering one another. I could 
not help feeling a sentimental regret that my first 
visit to my native city in the capacity of a political 
leader should have been a decidedly unwelcome 
event to so many of my fellow-citizens. 

Our next important expedition was to the city 
of Kilkenny, in the representation of which a 
vacancy had occurred and was to be filled up by 
the election of a new member. The candidate of 
the party to which I belonged was my dear old 
friend, Sir John Pope Hennessy, who had for some 
time settled down to the life of a private citizen, 
after having held appointment as Governor in 
many far-away colonies and settlements. Sir John 
Hennessy, who had been a member of the House 
of Commons in his early days, had obtained his 

365 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

first Colonial Governorship through the influence 
of Disraeli. Now that he had settled down to un- 
ofificial life in the British Islands, he felt his love 
for the ways of Parliament coming up again and 
was anxious to obtain a seat in the House. He 
had always been a sincere Nationalist even while 
he held his Government appointments, and before 
the split took place in the Irish National party it 
had been understood that Parnell was to adopt 
him as a candidate at the first opportunity. When 
the action in the divorce court became a scandal 
and was followed by Parnell's manifesto, Sir John 
did not see his way to accept Parnell as leader, 
and with his devotion to the authority of the Catho- 
lic Church he could not bring himself to go against 
the declarations of the leading Catholic Bishops 
and Priests in Great Britain and Ireland as to the 
moral effect of the divorce suit on Parnell's claims 
to leadership. The majority of the National party 
at once adopted him as their candidate for Kil- 
kenny, and several Nationalist members, among 
whom were Thomas Sexton, T. M. Healy, and 
myself, joined him at Kilkenny. We had a stir- 
ring time of it there. I was particularly amused 
and delighted by the imperturbable courage and 
composure which Hennessy showed during the 
whole of the struggle. The streets of the city and 
the outlying roads were crowded every day by the 
supporters of either side, and there were occasional 
tumults which called for police intervention, al- 

366 



THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE 

though no really serious and dangerous disturb- 
ance occurred. 

Despite all my years of experience in political 
conflict, I have always felt a nervous dislike to the 
pressure and the rush of crowds. Even when they 
were altogether friendly and applauding crowds, 
such as used to welcome me when I arrived at 
the railway station in Longford, my constituency 
for many years, I felt a sense of relief when the 
welcoming reception was over and I was quietly 
settled in my hotel. But in Kilkenny the condi- 
tion of things was wholly different. There we had 
the elements of conflict, and our cheering crowds 
were met by hissing and hooting crowds through 
which we had to walk or drive in the best way we 
could. Sir John Hennessy seemed to take the 
whole experience as if it were part of some de- 
lightful entertainment. He and I often drove 
through and around the city in the dear old jaunt- 
ing-car which affords about as little protection to 
its occupants as the fearlessness of man could 
desire. Hennessy was always bland, smiling, and 
serene. When we were hooted and denounced by 
passing groups, he raised his hat and bowed grace- 
fully as if we were receiving genial compliments. 
He would not listen to the idea of making the 
slightest circuit to escape the chance of meeting 
a hostile crowd, and he occasionally made some 
good-humoured and amusing rejoinder to a loud- 
voiced comment on our political conduct. I sup- 

367 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

pose he had been through too many serious 
dangers during his periods of administration in 
disturbed regions to take any serious view of the 
perils of electioneering in Ireland, and from his 
very boyhood he had always shown an indomitable 
self-possession and courage. Hennessy's unvary- 
ing good spirits and rapidness of talk were in no 
sense stimulated, even during this election cam- 
paign, by the artificial aids which not uncommonly 
help to keep up the courage of men engaged in 
such battles. Although he was not in his maturer 
years a total abstainer, he was one of the most 
abstemious men I have ever met in social life. 
When he was a guest at a dinner party he allowed 
his glass of wine to be filled so that he might con- 
form with the ways of social life, but he hardly 
ever did more than put his lips to the wine, and 
for the rest of the meal left it untasted. In this 
peculiarity he reminded me of John Bright, and 
also, indeed, of Charles Stewart Parnell. Hen- 
nessy was fond of milk and cream and the like 
nutritious draughts, and it was a curious sight to 
see him, when we returned to our Kilkenny hotel 
late at night and some friends came in with us for 
a morsel of supper, revelling in the luxury of a 
bowl of whey as his share in the festivity. He had 
a marvellous gift of humorous and brilliant talk, 
and was one of the most inexhaustible and at the 
same time delightful talkers it has ever been my 
good fortune to know. 

368 



THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE 

I was not able to see the contest to its end, for 
the conferences going on in Boulogne made it 
necessary that some of us should go over there, 
and my colleagues and other friends in Kilkenny 
thought that I ought to be one of the ambassadors. 
I would much rather have remained for the result 
of the Kilkenny election, but we had good reason 
to believe that the triumph of our candidate was 
certain, and therefore, in company with two or 
three of my colleagues, I left the scene of electoral 
struggle and started for Boulogne. It was, in fact, 
in the shop of an English bookseller and news- 
agent in Boulogne that I first heard the news of 
Sir John Hennessy's election as member for Kil- 
kenny. Thus my old friend from early boyish 
days was now to enter the House of Commons 
again and to join the National party under my 
leadership. We had been separated for half a life- 
time, while I was working at literature and journal- 
ism, with politics combined, and he was represent- 
ing the British Empire in many foreign regions 
from West Africa to China. I thought of our old 
days in the Cork Temperance Institute and the 
Cork Historical Society when I heard the news 
which told me that we were now to be companions 
as fellow-members of the great debating society 
in Westminster Palace. I little knew at that mo- 
ment how soon our new companionship was des- 
tined to end. John Pope Hennessy was my junior 
by some years, and seemed in the possession of 

369 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

vigorous vitality. I could not have foreseen how 
short a time he was to serve under my Parlia- 
mentary leadership, and how soon I should have 
to enroll him In my memory among the friends 
whom I had loved and lost. 

Meanwhile, my personal relations with Parnell 
continued to be on a friendly footing. When 
the Parliamentary session opened we met often 
for the purpose of arranging business matters 
which had been left unsettled since the split in 
the party took place, and Parnell always received 
me with his old-time cordiality. On one occasion 
we went together to a banking house in the city 
to make new arrangements about the appropria- 
tion of some funds which had been deposited 
there in his name in the days when he was leader 
of the united party. I only mention this incident 
because of the astonishment created in Palace 
Yard when Parnell and I drove up In the same 
hansom to the members' entrance of the House 
of Commons. It was the talk of the lobby for 
hours after that we two, who were now regarded 
as deadly enemies, should have come to the House 
together in such a way as if we had never been 
separated by disunion of any kind. I had heard 
from many friends that Parnell was doing serious 
injury to his health by rushing from place to place 
in Ireland during a dreary winter, and taxing his 
strength by the incessant making of speeches to 
great open-air meetings. I remonstrated with him, 

370 



THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE 

and urged him not to overtax his strength. I 
pointed out to him that wherever an election con- 
test was Hkely to take place between the two 
divisions of the party, the minds of the electors 
were already so well made up, and the issue in 
dispute so clearly defined, that no degree of energy 
and no amount of speech-making on his part could 
seriously affect the result. I earnestly advised 
him to let some of his colleagues do most of the 
electioneering work, and to spare his own strength 
as far as he possibly could. I told him he might 
take it for granted that everybody on his own 
side and on ours would fully understand his rea- 
son for not rushing over the country so much, or 
making quite so many speeches ; that he had under 
his own leadership many men of far greater con- 
stitutional strength, and endowed with eloquence 
which never failed to tell upon a crowd. 

Parnell listened to all my remonstrances and 
counsels quietly and thanked me for them, but he 
assured me that the incessant movement was at 
the present crisis likely to do him more good than 
harm, as it kept him from brooding too much 
over the troubles that had come upon the country 
and upon him. In the occasional talks which we 
had after the break-up of the party no allusion 
was ever made to the subject of the divorce court, 
but in every other way we interchanged ideas very 
much as we might have done if we had still been 
members of the same party. At the time when I 

371 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

offered him my advice and when he gave me his 
answer, I began to think that there might be sound 
reason in his reply. Perhaps any exercise of physi- 
cal energy, even though it included severe over- 
taxing of his strength and nerves, was better for 
him than constant melancholy brooding over the 
sudden change in his political fortunes and the 
break-up of the party once devoted to his leader- 
ship. But as time went on., I became more and 
more convinced that Parnell was actually wearing 
out his life in a futile struggle. I still remained 
on terms of friendship with some of his followers 
who had been close friends of mine in the days 
when we were all members of the same party, and 
I came to know that they were filled with the 
dread, even the conviction, that Parnell was ex- 
hausting himself by incessant work, and was hur- 
rying himself on to a fatal break-down. No advice, 
they told me, no remonstrance, no pleading, could 
prevail on him to husband his physical resources 
and to save himself for the great career which 
they believed was still before him. 

The bye-elections meantime were telling heavily 
against him, and it was easy to foresee that when 
the General Election, not now far distant, should 
test the feeling of Ireland, the Irish Nationalist 
members under the leadership of Parnell must be 
reduced to an insignificant number. Even before 
this there were members of Parnell's party who 
had made up their minds not to seek reelection to 

372 



THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE 

the House of Commons. Some of these men had 
thus far followed Parnell through thick and thin 
because of their political and personal devotion to 
him rather than because they thoroughly admitted 
that the course he had taken was under the con- 
ditions the right course. They would not desert 
him at what seemed to be the darkest hour in his 
fortune, but they were not prepared to return to 
the House of Commons as members of one frac- 
tion of the National party in perpetual antagonism 
to the other and much greater fraction. If Par- 
nell had only been prevailed upon to keep out of 
public life for a time, even although he had still 
remained the nominal leader of the Irish party, it 
is my firm belief that there would have been no 
division in the National ranks or in the country, 
and that the progress of Ireland's great cause 
would have met with no interruption. Under such 
conditions an interval of rest might have enabled 
Parnell to keep his strength and health, to return 
to public life after his marriage, to succeed in car- 
rying that cause he had done so much to advance, 
and to rejoice over its triumph. It was not ordained 
that events should take so happy a course for him 
and for us. Parnell followed his own idea, " walked 
his own wild road whither that led him," and it 
led him to his death. I saw him for the last time 
scarcely three weeks before his death. He called 
on me rather late one night at my house in Cheyne 
Gardens, Chelsea, and we had a long talk over 

373 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

political events and prospects and on many other 
subjects, and we talked as friends, for all that had 
come and gone. He died at Brighton on the 6th 
of October, 1 891, less than six months after his 
marriage with the woman whom he loved. By a 
strange and melancholy coincidence I read of his 
death on the very same day which brought me the 
news that Sir John Pope Hennessy was dead. I 
have always regarded Parnell as one of the great- 
est statesmen of his time. When we consider the 
poverty of the resources on which he had to rely, 
when we remember that he had no Imperial funds 
to support him, no organised administration at 
his back, that established authority in Westmin- 
ster and in Dublin Castle was almost ever against 
him, I think we are entitled to claim for him the 
position of a really great statesman. One work 
of unspeakable value which he accomplished was 
that he taught the Irish people not to waste their 
strength, their hopes, and their lives in futile at- 
tempts to maintain an insurrectionary struggle 
against the overwhelming force of England, and 
showed them how the English Constitution itself 
supplied them with the best machinery under the 
guidance of such a man as he for accomplishing 
the triumph of their national cause. No Irish 
party in the House of Commons ever had any- 
thing like the strength and the efficiency which 
the Irish party under Parnell's leadership enjoyed 
for so many years, enjoys once again now that it 

374 



THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE 

is again united, and might never have enjoyed if 
Parnell had not come up to show how the work 
was to be done. His name will be remembered for- 
ever in the history of Ireland. I cannot but feel 
proud of having served long under the leadership 
of such a man, having known him well as a friend, 
and having kept in friendship with him to the 
last. 



375 



CHAPTER XXI 

MY LAST MEETING WITH GLADSTONE 

The General Election came on in 1892, and the 
party I had then the honour of leading came into 
the House of Commons with seventy-two mem- 
bers, while only nine Parnellites were returned by 
the Irish constituencies. I have many melancholy 
recollections associated with that time. We, the 
majority of the Irish Nationalists, had won our 
success, and had proved that we possessed the con- 
fidence of the great majority of the Irish people, 
but none of us were, at that time, quite in the 
mood for exulting over our victory. It was always 
a pain to look upon that small group of Irish Na- 
tionalist members who had so lately been our col- 
leagues and comrades, and were now sitting apart 
from us and compelled by the necessity of their 
position to take no share in our consultations and 
our movements. We could not but know that 
some of these men must have felt bitterly towards 
us, and we could not but recognise that there was 
much of generous self-sacrifice in the devotion 
with which they had followed their old leader to 
the last. 

I may say with sincerity that I had accepted 
376 



MY LAST MEETING WITH GLADSTONE 

the leadership of the great majority of the Irish 
Nationalists because I thought that under all the 
conditions there was nothing better to be done for 
the interests of the party and the cause. I was not 
convinced that I was the right man in the right 
place, but I believed that my acceptance of the 
leadership would be less likely to arouse criticism 
or disparagement than if one of the younger mem- 
bers had been chosen as the successor to Parnell. 
No one of us considered himself the equal of Par- 
nell, but it seemed that there would be less likeli- 
hood of disparaging contrast or of discontent if 
the vice-chairman of the once united party, who 
happened also to be one of its oldest members, 
should be placed in the position of leadership. 
There were many men in the party of great ability, 
practical understanding of Irish affairs, and bril- 
liant eloquence, — men like Thomas Sexton, John 
Dillon, William O'Brien, and T. P. O'Connor, — 
who had higher qualifications for the position of 
leader than I. But on the other hand these were 
men of about the same age, and there might have 
been something invidious in selecting one of these, 
none of whom stood in official succession, and set- 
ting him above his colleagues with equal political 
qualifications and about equal in years. I accepted 
the position offered to me as the best way of extri- 
cating the party from a temporary difficulty, but I 
had made up my mind from the beginning not 
long to retain the leadership after the party should 

377 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

settle down and there should seem to be good 
hopes of complete reunion and reconstruction. 

Many personal reasons helped me to this re- 
solve. I saw that it would not be possible for me 
to give up the whole of my time to politics, as the 
leader of the party would certainly have to do dur- 
ing the sittings of Parliament, without sacrifice to 
my literary work. It had become all the more 
necessary for me to keep to my work as much as 
possible because a recent event had made a seri- 
ous inroad on my means of living. An exhibition 
of Irish industrial products had been started not 
long before with the object of drawing the atten- 
tion of the British public and the world in gen- 
eral to the excellent work which Irish brains and 
Irish hands could accomplish, and thus opening to 
Ireland an ever expanding market for what she 
had to sell. The project was organised to a great 
extent by benevolent Englishmen, among whom 
were a large number of peers and others of great 
influence, and the exhibition was to be held on the 
grounds of Olympia at West Kensington. An 
executive committee was formed, including many 
eminent nobles, and it was thought desirable that 
there should be at least one member of the Irish 
Parliamentary party on it. The position was of- 
fered to Parnell, but he was unwilling to take it 
for reasons which seemed to me valid and clear. 
He knew that his name was just then odious to a 
large number of Englishmen, and he feared that 

378 



MY LAST MEETING WITH GLADSTONE 

if he were to occupy a prominent position on the 
executive, the fact might have a disparaging effect 
on the success of the exhibition. His great desire 
was that the exhibition should be a complete suc- 
cess, and he believed that it would be better for that 
end if I, who had lived so long in England and 
who was known more to the general English pub- 
lic as an author than as a politician, were to take 
the place, while the fact that the vice-chairman of 
the party was a member of the executive would be 
enough to satisfy Irishmen that the national sen- 
timents of Ireland were not disregarded by the or- 
ganizers of the enterprise. I readily acceded to his 
wish and became a member of the executive com- 
mittee. The list contained the names of several 
dukes, marquises, earls, and others; but when it 
came to be a matter of business and work, we soon 
found that the executive committee was repre- 
sented at nearly all its meetings by a very small 
number of its members. There were, in fact, only 
four of us who were regular in attendance, and 
these were the late Earl of Leitrim, Lord Arthur 
Hill, who had been one of the Government Whips 
in many Conservative Administrations, Mr. Her- 
bert Gladstone, and myself. The exhibition was a 
distinct success so far as the nature and display 
of products was concerned, and in obtaining an 
increase of purchasers for Irish manufactures and 
giving a fresh stimulus to Irish industries. But in 
the money sense, where the working of the exhibi- 

379 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

tion itself was concerned, it turned out to be a fail- 
ure. I am not enough of a business man to give 
a clear explanation of the causes of this failure. 
I believe that the practical or mechanical arrange- 
ments for the enterprise were put into the hands 
of another company which had managed similar 
enterprises, and that this company itself came into 
difficulties owing to causes with which the Irish 
exhibition had nothing to do. So far as I remem- 
ber, our exhibition would have been a success if 
its organisers had worked it for themselves, but 
by putting it into the hands of a separate com- 
pany, it became involved in the embarrassments 
of that company and had to bear its share of the 
loss. 

The one fact about which I am quite clear is 
t*hat the executive committee of our exhibition was 
made responsible for a large amount of money. 
But "old Father Antic, the law," intervened with 
curious effect when the whole question came to 
be considered in a court of justice. The majority 
of the judges before whom the subject came up 
for consideration decided that only those mem- 
bers of the executive committee who habitually 
attended its meetings were liable for the amount 
of debt, and that the dukes, marquises, earls, and 
others who allowed their names to be put on the 
list of the committee, but who never attended its 
meetings, were free from all pecuniary responsi- 
bility. Perhaps I was too deeply interested in the 

380 



MY LAST MEETING WITH GLADSTONE 

effect of the decision to be considered an impar- 
tial critic as to the principle laid down ; but it 
certainly seemed to me that the creditors of the 
executive committee must have advanced their 
money much more in reliance on the substantial 
pecuniary position of the dukes and marquises 
than on that of my colleagues and myself, whom 
the decree of the court saddled with the whole 
responsibility. One of the learned judges — Mr. 
Justice Mathew — differed from the others, and 
maintained that the men who allowed themselves 
to be publicly proclaimed as members of the execu- 
tive committee and did not attend its meetings 
were just as liable for its failure as those who at- 
tended and did the best they could to make it a 
success. The result of the law proceedings was 
that those of us against whom the judgment was 
given were made liable for a very large sum of 
money. So far as I was concerned, I might as 
well have been called upon to pay off a fourth 
part of England's national debt. Many members 
of both Houses of Parliament contributed by pri- 
vate subscription some thousands of pounds to 
help us who were members of the one House or 
the other out of our difHculties ; but even this gen- 
erosity left a large sum still to be made up among 
ourselves. The whole event was a crisis in my 
fortunes. I had for many years been giving my- 
self up very much to Parliament, and my literary 
work had suffered in quality, I am afraid, as well 

381 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

as in quantity, by my attention to the business of 
the House of Commons. While the case before 
the courts was in preparation and was actually 
going on, I had to pay my share of what I may 
call the current legal expenses, and this was in 
itself a heavy trial to my modest revenue. My 
publishers, Messrs. Chatto & Windus, came to my 
aid with that friendly promptitude and practical 
sympathy for which I have more than once had 
reason to be grateful to them. They bought up 
some of my copyrights on good terms, and with 
the condition, suggested by themselves, that I 
should be enabled to resume the copyright at any 
time on the repayment of the sum they had given. 
When I had made the best arrangements I could 
to meet the claims imposed on me by the failure 
of the exhibition, I found that I was still a debtor 
for more than seven thousand pounds to the fund 
which was necessary for winding up the enter- 
prise. Those of my colleagues on the executive 
committee on whom the responsibility for the 
settlement had fallen acted towards me with the 
utmost consideration and friendliness. Some ar- 
rangements were made which were conducted for 
me by my friend Mr. Fletcher Moulton, the emi- 
nent advocate and member of Parliament, by 
which I was to be allowed an undefined extension 
of time to pay up my part of the contribution; 
and in point of fact, my liability was converted 
into a personal debt towards those of my col- 

382 



MY LAST MEETING WITH GLADSTONE 

leagues who had made themselves responsible for 
the amount of the claims on me. I do not desire 
to go at any greater length into this part of my 
history, and I have detailed it at such length 
chiefly with the object of expressing my grateful 
sense of the consideration and kindness shown to 
me by so many of my friends. 

The losses entailed on me by my connection 
with the Irish exhibition made it clear that I 
could not devote as much time in the future to 
the work of the Irish National party as I had 
done in the past, and that the leadership must 
be transferred at the earliest possible opportunity 
to some one who was not compelled to work for 
his living at the same time. It seemed to me that 
there was one man who had all the qualities 
necessary for leadership, whose name carried he- 
reditary influence with it among all Irishmen at 
home and abroad, whose personal character and 
capacity had won the enthusiastic admiration of 
Irish Nationalists and had won the respect and 
confidence of his extreme political opponents, 
and who could devote, who always devoted, his 
whole time to the service of his country. My 
friend John Dillon was the man whom I looked 
upon as the one most likely to be welcomed by 
the Nationalist majority and by the great major- 
ity of the Irish people as the leader of the new 
Irish Parliamentary party. Therefore, when the 
right opportunity came, I resigned my position 

383 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

as leader of the party and proposed that John 
Dillon should be elected to the vacant place. He 
was elected accordingly by the unanimous vote of 
the party, and as it is the custom of the party to 
renew the leadership in each succeeding year, I 
had the honour more than once to propose with 
success and to carry without opposition Mr. Dil- 
lon's reelection to the place of leader. How well 
he served his country during his leadership is 
known to his countrymen, and will be an impor- 
tant part in his country's history. 

I had no intention of resigning my seat in the 
House of Commons when I withdrew from the 
leadership of my party, and it had not come into 
my mind at that time that I could ever think of 
retiring from Parliamentary life so long as I had 
physical strength for the duties of a member, and 
so long as I could by vote and voice help in any 
way towards the success of Ireland's national 
claims. I continued for some sessions a regular 
attendant at the sittings of the House of Com- 
mons, but as I had no longer the responsibility 
and the incessant work of the party leader, I was 
able to get on steadily with my literary produc- 
tions. I also made a little money now and then 
by delivering lectures in various cities and towns 
in England. I found that there was much to in- 
terest me in this kind of work, and in the new 
scenes I looked upon and new acquaintances I 
made. I was fortunate not merely in making ac- 

384 



MY LAST MEETING WITH GLADSTONE 

quaintances, but in making friends with whom 
I have remained on terms of friendship, what- 
ever the distance between their homes and mine 
may be. 

I received about this time a pressing and a very- 
tempting offer to deliver a course of lectures in 
Australia, and I believe that if I could have ac- 
cepted the offer and could then have made the 
lectures worthy of the attention and interest of the 
audiences, I might have realised a very substan- 
tial result from the enterprise, — the result which 
would have been especially satisfactory to me just 
then. But at the time when the offer was made to 
me it was not in my power to enter on so long 
an engagement and at such a distance, and thus 
I missed my opportunity of seeing and studying 
that new world of Australasia which it had long 
been one of my dreams to visit. I might, of course, 
have put myself in the way of inviting a renewal 
of the offer, and for some time I was quite resolved 
to take such a course; but, as I shall have to tell 
my readers presently, the fates were against me, 
and I was allowed no chance of addressing an Aus- 
tralian audience and studying the life of the great 
rising colonies now grouped in the Australian 
Dominion. 

I still enjoyed my life in the House of Com- 
mons, although the division which had maimed 
the strength of the Irish party was a source of 
constant pain to all of us, and, to make it still 

385 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

worse, had a discontented section in that majority 
of the party that I had lately been leading. We 
had amongst us a group of men, just as sincere 
Nationalists as we, who looked upon everything 
done by the majority with an intensely critical 
eye. Among this small group of our members this 
disposition increased rather than diminished when 
John Dillon became leader of the party, and prob- 
ably for the reason which I have already given. 
Dillon had come into Parliamentary life at the 
time with most of these men ; he belonged in 
years to the younger order of members, and men 
of his own age were less ready to submit to his 
control than they might have been to that of one 
who belonged to an elder generation. Then there 
were in our party some two or three men who were 
not naturally disposed to submit to leadership of 
any kind. 

It is only right to point out that these internal 
divisions among the members of the Irish party 
were merely such as anybody might see in the 
history of any Parliamentary party, if he had an 
opportunity of studying it closely. We all know 
that even among the members of a British Cabi- 
net, which nevertheless holds together for years, 
there are frequent differences of opinion as to this 
or that stroke of policy ; that there are men who 
do not believe, and do not always profess to be- 
lieve, that the Prime Minister is fitted for the 
position he holds; that there are members of the 

386 



MY LAST MEETING WITH GLADSTONE 

Cabinet who are jealous and distrustful of others ; 
that in the Administration just outside the Cabinet 
there are men who believe that they themselves 
ought to be inside while others ought to be outside. 
We do not need to study the " Greville Memoirs " 
or the " Creevy Papers " in order to know that 
men occasionally hold seats in the same Adminis- 
tration or the same Cabinet who have a strong 
personal dislike for each other, and are not always 
able to keep their feelings under control. In the 
party of Irish Nationalists which I had for the time 
the honour of leading, there were some men who 
did not always agree with the policy adopted by 
the majority, and who occasionally gave to their 
expressions of antagonism something of a per- 
sonal character. 

During the famous sittings in Committee Room 
No. 15 while Parnell was endeavouring to carry his 
policy by a rush, a strong opposition was set up 
against this mode of action by some of those who 
believed, as I did, that the retirement of our leader 
from active politics was essential for the time. 
When the debate was becoming persistent, Parnell 
suddenly rose to his feet and, with a glance of 
scorn at his opponents and a tone of humour in 
his voice, declared that Irish Nationalists ought 
to reserve for the House of Commons and not dis- 
play in their own private meetings the policy of 
obstruction which some of those present were then 
trying to carry out. Even in the party afterwards 

387 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

led by me and then by John Dillon, there were 
times when one might have felt inclined to adopt 
the rebuke of Parnell and object to the policy of 
obstruction as a part of our tactics in our own de- 
bates. I only dwell upon these occasional divi- 
sions of opinion in the Nationalist party to make it 
clear that neither to John Dillon nor to myself was 
the leadership of the party a position of unalloyed 
personal satisfaction. At the same time it has 
to be said in the most emphatic manner that our 
differences of personal opinion, even when they 
threatened, as they sometimes did, to border on 
the quarrelsome, did not in any sense affect our 
agreement as to our great national cause, or as 
to the imperative need that there was for combined 
action on the part of Irish National members to 
bring that cause at some early date to a successful 
issue. It was becoming more evident to the Irish 
members every session that the existence of two 
separated Irish National parties in the House of 
Commons was an immense disadvantage to any 
practical movement in the right direction. The 
feeling was already growing up, which took shape 
not Ions: after the time at which I have now ar- 
rived and led to that National movement origi- 
nated mainly by my friend William O'Brien, which 
brought about the union of the two parties under 
the leadership of him whom I may also describe 
as my friend, John Redmond. 

In the mean time an event had taken place 
388 



MY LAST MEETING WITH GLADSTONE 

which caused the most profound interest through- 
out the whole of the civilised world. On the ist 
of March, 1894, Mr. Gladstone delivered his last 
speech in the House of Commons. That speech 
did not distinctly announce that his resignation of 
his seat in Parliament was to follow at once, but 
some members of the House had already reason 
to feel a strong conviction that such was the resolve 
of the great statesman. The speech was for the 
most part an emphatic and powerful protest against 
the conduct of the Lords by their recent inter- 
ference with the action of the majority of the Com- 
mons, and by their instant rejection of measures 
sent up by that majority for the formal sanction 
of the Peers. Gladstone's speech referred directly 
to certain recent Bills which had been rejected by 
the Hereditary Chamber, but every one knew full 
well that the one subject he had more than all 
others in mind was the conduct of the Peers in 
rejecting the second Home Rule measure. I have 
always thought since then that Mr. Gladstone's 
reason for withholding from the House any an- 
nouncement of his resolve to withdraw from Par- 
liamentary life was that he felt unwilling to weaken 
the effect of his warning to the Commons, that 
they must resist the overbearing intrusion of the 
Lords, by an announcement which must, for the 
time, have absorbed the whole interest and feel- 
ings of his audience. I listened to every sentence 
of this memorable speech with the deepest emo- 

389 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

tion, and until the very end I still kept on expect- 
insf some words which should announce Glad- 
stone's farewell to his place in Parliament. But as 
no such words were spoken, I began to wonder 
whether it could be that after all the great Prime 
Minister had made up his mind to retain his place 
of power for yet a little longer. Soon after the 
speech had come to an end, I met John Morley 
in one of the lobbies and asked him whether that 
was indeed the last time the House was to be ad- 
dressed by Mr. Gladstone. Morley assured me in 
few and decisive words that the speech we had 
heard was the very last we were ever to hear in 
the House of Commons from those lips. 

Four days after, on the 5th of March, 1894, I 
had my last interview with Mr. Gladstone. He 
had written a short and friendly letter asking me 
to call on him at twelve o'clock on that day. He 
was still occupying his official residence in Down- 
ing Street, and he welcomed me with the kind- 
ness and cordiality which I had ever experienced 
from him since I came to be personally known to 
him. We had a long talk on political subjects, and 
on many other subjects as well. He assured me 
with all the earnestness and the emphasis so char- 
acteristic of him when he felt deeply on any ques- 
tion, that he was thoroughly devoted to the cause 
of Home Rule for Ireland, and perfectly satisfied 
in his mind that the Home Rule cause was des- 
tined to come, and before very long, to a trium- 

390 



MY LAST MEETING WITH GLADSTONE 

phant issue. He spoke of Parnell in language of 
generous appreciation, and expressed his profound 
regret that so really great a career should have 
come to so sudden and disastrous an end. I did 
not venture to say anything on my own account 
about Gladstone's reasons for withdrawing from 
Parliamentary life, although I expressed at the 
very opening of our conversation the deep regret 
felt by my Parliamentary colleagues and myself 
at such a loss, and my conviction that the whole 
Irish people abroad, as well as at home, would 
feel that a tower of strength had been removed 
from our cause by the decision which he had 
taken. But in the course of our conversation 
Gladstone himself spoke of his reasons for what 
seemed to all of us a premature retirement, and 
talked much of his general motives for such a de- 
cision. I could easily understand, from what he 
told me, that he had begun to experience or at 
least to dread some failure in his physical powers, 
and that he was unwilling that the close of his 
career should be anything in the nature of an 
anti-climax. I learned from him that his sight 
and his hearing were growing less acute of late 
years than they had been, and that he found cer- 
tain difficulties in carrying on the mere practical 
work of Parliamentary leadership which warned 
him that he had done enough and had better leave 
the stage. I could not help thinking of those touch- 
ing words of Thackeray's, which declare the man 

391 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

to be happy who leaves the field in time, and yields 
his broken sword to Fate, the conqueror, with a 
resigned and cheerful heart. Gladstone appeared, 
indeed, to have a resigned and cheerful heart no 
matter how much he may have regretted the ne- 
cessity, borne in upon his mind, of leaving that 
field in which he had won so many magnificent 
triumphs and on which he had never dealt un- 
fairly with any foe. His whole tone was animated 
and cheerful, and he showed an active interest in 
many subjects which had nothing to do with Parlia- 
ment and political struggles. He did not speak as 
if this meeting of ours had the nature of a fare- 
well ; on the contrary, he expressed a strong hope 
that some of my Nationalist colleagues and I 
would visit him before long at Hawarden Castle 
and there interchange views as to the best means 
of carrying on the Home Rule cause. I left him 
with the full hope that I should yet have the good 
fortune to meet him often, but that interview in 
his Downing Street house was the last I was ever 
destined to have with him. That was, indeed, a 
farewell meeting, for I never saw him again. I 
had had many opportunities in previous years 
of enjoying his society and his great intellectual 
gifts. I had often been a guest at his London 
home and at Dollis Hill, had met him at other 
houses, and was always treated by him with friend- 
liness and confidence. He had consulted with me 
privately from time to time on political subjects 

392 



MY LAST MEETING WITH GLADSTONE 

of passing interest, and had always seemed to me 
thoroughly frank in the exposition of his views 
and in his questions as to my opinions. I could 
not but feel that his passing out of the Parlia- 
mentary world, while it closed a great and ever 
memorable era in English history, closed for me a 
chapter of profound interest in the story of my 
life. 



393 



^ CHAPTER XXII 

BROKEN HEALTH 

Meanwhile, to return to my personal narrative, 
I had removed from my pleasant home in Chel- 
sea and taken up my residence in a more central 
part of London. I had taken a house in Eaton 
Terrace, near Eaton Square, and was thus within 
easier reach of Westminster Palace. I left Chelsea 
with much reluctance. The Chelsea region w^as 
hallowed to me by many old associations and by 
many feelings of personal regard. In Chelsea I 
had made my earliest experiences of London life, 
and it is above all things else a picturesque quarter 
hallowed by historic memories, and has long been 
a recognised habitation of literature and art. It 
seemed something like a descent into the common- 
place to pass into one of the newer parts of Lon- 
don, to a region which seldom reminds one of the 
storied past. But I had found it well-nigh impos- 
sible to get through all my literary work and to 
give the necessary attention to my Parliamentajry 
duties while living in the comparatively distant 
Chelsea district. The House of Commons had 
begun to hold frequent winter sessions, and it was 
a toilsome journey in the early winter mornings to 

394 



BROKEN HEALTH 

get from Westminster Palace to Cheyne Gardens. 
The man who could afford to keep a carriage 
would have little occasion to trouble himself about 
the longer distance, but I was not thus fortunately 
endowed. The House of Commons habitually con- 
cluded its sitting at an hour when there was no 
railway communication with Chelsea, and often in 
weather when it was not quite easy to get a han- 
som cab to undertake the journey. On any nights 
when I was not engaged in the House of Com- 
mons, I was sure to be writing a late leading 
article for the " Daily News," and the drive from 
the offices in the City to Cheyne Gardens, Chel- 
sea, at perhaps three o'clock in the morning and 
perhaps in a thick London fog, was an enterprise 
requiring some courage and patience. I have some 
recollections of expeditions thus undertaken to 
reach my home during a fog, of the cabman finally 
declaring it impossible for him to make his way, 
of the horse falling down by mistaking the flagged 
sidewalk for the open road, and of having ulti- 
mately to get out of the vehicle altogether, leave 
the cab driver and his horse to their fate, and try 
to find my way as best I could through the be- 
wildering darkness. It was a relief to me to settle 
down in Eaton Terrace, where I was quite near to 
Sloane Square Station, from which the Under- 
ground Railway could carry me at any hour when 
trains were running to Westminster Station, where 
an underground passage led into the precincts of 

395 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

Westminster Palace. That house in Eaton Ter- 
race was my last London residence. 

I paid two visits to Ireland during these later 
days, each visit having to do with political affairs, 
and neither possessing the charms of holiday- 
making. The later of these two visits to my na- 
tive country, the last that I have yet paid, was on 
an occasion when a great National Convention of 
Irishmen was gathered together in Dublin to con- 
sider the state of political affairs with regard to 
the interests of Ireland and her cause. The Con- 
vention was attended by influential and distin- 
guished Irishmen from all parts of Great Britain 
and Ireland, from the United States, Canada, and 
Australasia, and, indeed, from every country in 
the world where Irishmen had made a settlement 
and found a home. The result of the Convention, 
of the speeches made, and the resolutions adopted 
there, was to encourage the Irish Parliamentary 
party to go boldly and unflinchingly on with their 
constitutional agitation for Ireland's cause, and to 
promise that the support of Irishmen everywhere 
should be given to enable them to bring the move- 
ment to a full success. 

I cannot help associating the memory of that 
great Convention with a somewhat absurd inci- 
dent, which I may narrate for the amusement of 
my readers. I had to cross from Dublin to Holy- 
head on a night of wild storm and furiously toss- 
ing seas. It was not my evil fortune to be trou- 

396 



BROKEN HEALTH 

bled with sea-sickness; but as it was impossible to 
move about in the agitated steamer, and not worth 
while to get into a berth, I stretched myself on a 
sofa in one of the small cabins, and comforted 
myself with the reflection that even though the 
passage might be considerably delayed, it must 
come to an end before very long. I had not quite 
counted on all the perils of the Irish Channel. I 
was literally tossed off my sofa by a tremendous 
lurch of the steamer, which turned over nearly on 
its side. I was flung violently against the oppo- 
site sofa, and when I tried to get on my feet was 
thrown down again, my face coming each time into 
collision with the framework of the sofa. When 
I settled down at last, determined to hold on to 
my couch with clutching hands, I found that I had 
received several cuts on the forehead and cheek- 
bones and was bleeding somewhat freely. The 
cuts proved to be merely superficial and harm- 
less, and when we got into Holyhead at last I was 
able to go on with the railway journey as if no- 
thing had happened. I went home, had my cuts 
and bruises properly looked after, and found that 
they came to nothing of importance. There were, 
however, several marks left on my forehead and 
under my eyes, and when I reached the House 
of Commons lobby that evening I came upon a 
group of English members, to all of whom I was 
well known. I was about to narrate my adven- 
ture to them, when one of them humorously said, 

397 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

" You need not tell us anything — we know that 
you have been attending the meetings of the Irish 
National Convention in Dublin, for we see the 
marks of the discussion on your face." The joke 
passed round the lobby, and had a success of its 
own for the time. 

The last speech I ever made in the House on 
a subject of any importance was at the time when 
it was proposed to set up a great statue of Oli- 
ver Cromwell somewhere within the precincts of 
Westminster Palace. The Liberal Government 
of the day was in favour of the suggestion, but we 
of the Irish National party felt that we could not 
allow such a proposal to pass without resolute op- 
position. My colleagues wished me to take part in 
the debate, and I readily agreed to do so. I pointed 
out to the House of Commons, when the debate 
came on, that the whole historical association of 
Cromwell with Ireland was one of merciless op- 
pression and cruelty, and that, therefore, so long 
as Irish National representatives sat in the British 
House of Commons, it was as much an outrage on 
their feelings to raise a statue of Cromwell in the 
precincts of Westminster Palace as it would be 
to the citizens of Antwerp or Brussels or Amster- 
dam to raise a statue there to the Duke of Alva, 
John Morley, who was then Secretary to the Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland, spoke with much good feel- 
ing and sympathy, and admitted that he had not 
until then quite understood how deep and strong 

398 



BROKEN HEALTH 

was the national feeling of Irishmen with regard 
to the policy and the actions of Cromwell in Ire- 
land. By our movement we succeeded, at all events, 
in obtaining a postponement and a modification 
of the proposal. I mention this fact chiefly be- 
cause it has a deep significance as illustrating Irish 
national sentiment, and partly for the personal 
reason that it was the last time when I took part 
in Parliamentary debate on any subject calling for 
printed record. 

I was greatly gratified some time afterwards to 
read in one of the published articles of my friend 
Henry W. Lucy, the " Toby M. P." of " Punch" 
and contributor to many other periodicals, the 
statement that Mr. Gladstone fully approved of 
the action I had taken with regard to the proposed 
statue to Cromwell within the precincts of West- 
minster Palace. Mr. Lucy told his readers the 
words in which Mr. Gladstone expressed his opin- 
ion to a social group of whom Lucy made one. I 
felt when I read of the incident that I could not 
have had any higher approval of the course which 
my Nationalist colleagues and I had made up our 
minds to pursue. 

In the April of 1897 appeared the fifth volume 
of "A History of Our Own Times." This vol- 
ume brought the story down from 1880 to the 
Diamond Jubilee. A great crisis in my life then 
interrupted for a while my literary occupations 
and brought to a close my Parliamentary career. 

399 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

Soon after the publication of that fifth volume of 
my history I was struck down by a serious illness. 
It seems to me, indeed, when looking back on 
that part of my life, as if I had fallen off some 
high place and lay for a while stunned and motion- 
less on the hard ground. I had never suffered 
from any really dangerous illness before. I had 
actually passed the age of fifty without having 
had to consult a doctor on my own account except 
when going through the preliminary examination 
for the completion of a life insurance. In later 
years, after I had accomplished my half-century, 
I had suffered from influenza during the famous 
year of influenza in England, and soon after had 
an attack of sciatica and other such ailments, but 
I had got over them each and all without any 
serious detriment to my general health. I suppose 
it was my robust constitution that tempted me 
into overwork and the neglect of the ordinary 
rules of life which are needed to keep one's health 
in good order. I had kept on taxing my physical 
resources to their very utmost by daily and nightly 
work at literature and journalism, and by close 
attendance at the House of Commons during its 
sittings, which had of late come to be added to 
by frequent winter sessions. Then I enjoyed soci- 
ety a great deal, went to many dinner parties dur- 
ing the season, visited the theatres whenever I 
could get a chance, and seldom failed to attend 
the first night of any new play. While the House 

400 



BROKEN HEALTH 

of Commons was sitting, I, like most others of my 
colleagues, had often to cut a dinner short and to 
be content with dining at any hour, early or late, 
when the debate gave us a chance. I had to 
attend a great many public meetings and to de- 
liver lectures here and there, and for some years 
had been able to do little or nothing in the way 
of holiday-making. All these causes would have 
brought about a break-down of some kind for one 
who was already sinking into years, but I held on 
to the very last without a suspicion that the break- 
down was near at hand. I lay for a long time in 
my home at Eaton Terrace wholly unconscious, 
and even when the worst of the danger was over, I 
was still for some weeks not quite sure of my own 
identity or that of those who came around me. I 
was well cared for, however. My son and daughter 
were to me as ministering angels, and I am firmly 
convinced that to the skill of my dear friend Mr. 
W. H. Staveley, the eminent member of the Col- 
lege of Surgeons, and to the care which was given 
me under his direction, I owe what I may literally 
describe as my restoration to life. There is no 
need for me to linger over this dreary chapter of 
my personal history, but I have to say something 
of it because it brought about the close of my 
public career. I can never forget and never could 
adequately describe the kind and constant atten- 
tions I received from my friends, and even from 
some with whom I had never been on terms of 

401 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

private friendship. I have many delightful recol- 
lections of the days when I found myself return- 
ing once again to full consciousness, and to a 
sense of the enjoyment which can be had even in 
London from the atmosphere of a summer day. 
When I had recovered strength enough to take a 
walk in Cadogan Place Gardens, near our house, I 
began to feel as if I were reborn and were brought 
into a new and fresh world. But these delicious 
sensations soon began to be modified by the 
knowledge that I must, for a time at least, give up 
all manner of work, that I must leave London 
before the summer came to an end, and that there 
was no probability of my being able soon to 
resume my place as a member of the House of 
Commons. 

My kindly doctor ordained that I must seek for 
rest and recovery in some seaside region where 
the atmosphere was especially clear and bracing. 
The little town or village of Westgate-on-Sea was 
fixed upon as the place of immediate settlement. 
My son and daughter and I were glad of this, for 
we had had some acquaintance already with the 
region of my new home. Some years before, we 
had passed the greater part of one winter at West- 
gate-on-Sea and had liked the place very much, 
although, at that robust period of my life, we used 
to rush up to town frequently in order that I might 
take part in some political business, or that we 
might all be present at some interesting dramatic 

402 



BROKEN HEALTH 

performance. This time, however, my stay at 
Westgate-on-Sea was not to be diversified by any 
expeditions to London, and I knew that I must 
make all other considerations subservient to the 
restoration of my health. There was something 
of curious interest to a man like me in the know- 
ledge that I must, for the first time in my life, 
take a long and unmoving holiday. My holiday 
intervals, up to this period, had been holidays of 
travel, of passing from one foreign country to 
another, from one foreign city to another, of study- 
ing closely every new scene and object that came 
in my way, and keeping my faculties always as 
much alive and active as possible for the appre- 
ciation of succeeding novelties. Now I was to 
leave London and settle down for a time in a 
quiet sea-coast village with which I was already 
well acquainted, and where in any case there was 
nothing much to be seen, and my object was to 
give to my physical and mental faculties as com- 
plete and lethargic a rest as could well be ob- 
tained. 

When about to leave London I had no idea 
that my retirement was to be anything more than 
an interval of rest, the interval necessary to re- 
store an invalid to his habitual good health and 
capacity for active work. I daresay I should have 
left London in somewhat of a tragic mood if I 
had known that I was making my final farewell 
to the life of the metropolis, and especially to the 

403 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

life of the House of Commons. But I had no idea 
of the kind and was wisely kept from anything 
which might suggest such an idea, so my assump- 
tion was that when I had recruited my strength 
I should be able to return to London and to my 
Parliamentary duties. My departure from Lon- 
don was, therefore, without anything of that dra- 
matic or romantic mood which would accompany 
the fall of the curtain at the close of a momentous 
act in life's drama. As the train left the London 
terminus I might have been making a mental re- 
trospect of all the years I had spent in that city, 
where it had been so long my ambition to settle 
and to struggle ; where I had settled and strug- 
gled from early manhood to later years, had found 
my way into literature and politics, had met with 
some degree of success, had made so many dear 
friendships, and suffered some heavy griefs. But 
on my way to the sea-coast my mind was not 
occupied by any such reflections. I fully expected 
to get back to my old life and my old work and 
to a London home before many months should 
have passed away. I had not then any thought 
of withdrawing from political life and resigning 
my seat in the House of Commons, and was 
merely ready to give up to complete rest as much 
time and no more as I supposed would be neces- 
sary for my restoration to health. My thoughts, 
therefore, as we were leaving London, were of as 
commonplace a kind as one might have at the 

404 



BROKEN HEALTH 

opening of an ordinary holiday, and I did not 
even cast one longing, lingering look behind. 

We went to Westgate on one of the closing 
days of July, 1897. My daughter and I settled 
there at first in lodgings looking on the sea, and 
soon began to enjoy the sunshine, the skies, the 
waves, and the quietude. My son was at that time 
actively engaged in dramatic work, and it was not 
possible for him to withdraw himself altogether 
from London and consign himself to a do-nothing 
existence in our sea-coast village. But he was with 
us whenever his engagements allowed him a tem- 
porary release, and the time went smoothly and 
pleasantly along. The quiet and the fresh sea 
breezes enabled me to improve steadily in health, 
and we had many visits of London friends to 
brighten our retirement. But it soon became evi- 
dent to me that I was threatened with a trouble 
to the sight which would have to be carefully 
dealt with. From my earliest recollections I had 
suffered from extremely short sight, but until quite 
lately it had been strong sight, although short, and 
had doomed me to no further penalty than the 
wearing of glasses. But I suppose that during my 
years of work as author, journalist, and politician 
I must have remorselessly overtaxed that strength 
of the eyes on which I was putting so much strain, 
and the result was that I now found it necessary 
to undergo some serious operations at the hands 
of a well-known London oculist. These operations 

405 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

compelled me for a time to take up my abode in a 
private hospital kept by him at Margate, and after- 
wards for some weeks in the Royal Eye Hospital, 
London, where he could give me closer attend- 
ance than would be possible at his seaside house. 
It may seem strange to say that I have on the 
whole very genial recollections of the weeks I 
passed in that London hospital. Numbers of my 
London friends came to see me every day when I 
could be seen, and made the time very pleasant for 
me despite the operations, the bandages, and the 
intervals of complete darkness which belonged to 
the process of cure. I was told of everything go- 
ing on in the living world outside, books and news- 
papers were read to me by kindly friends, my son 
and daughter were constantly with me, and the time 
passed brightly notwithstanding its hours of un- 
avoidable darkness. The work of cure, so far as it 
could be accomplished, came to an end before long. 
I was told that everything the skill of the oculist 
could do had been done for me, and that I might 
return to my resting-place by the sea. It was, how- 
ever, now quite certain that for reading and writ- 
ing I must henceforward rely on the eyes of others 
and not my own, and I need hardly dilate on the 
meaning of such privation to one who from his 
very childhood had ever been a reader of books. 
But I could see all the objects of life around me 
quite well enough for all ordinary enjoyment of 
existence, I could appreciate a landscape or the 

406 



BROKEN HEALTH 

changing colours of the sea, a rivulet, a flower- 
bed, a hedge-row, or a valley as well as I could ever 
have done, and I came back to the sea-coast vil- 
lage with the very vivid impression that life for 
me might still be well worth the living. 

Gradually I grew to be acquainted with the fact 
that I must give up for a long time all thought of 
residence in London. My doctor was resolute in 
his opinion that only by remaining in a seaside 
region, where the air was especially bracing, could 
I hope for anything like a restoration to health. 
London was wholly unsuitable to me for any such 
purpose. I was not to go back to London, I was 
not to take any part in political work, I was not 
to think of daily journalism, and even any literary 
labour I might undertake in my seaside home was 
to be strictly limited to a certain number of hours 
each day, and this working-time was to be divided 
into two or more separate portions. I had the 
most perfect faith in his advice, and I knew well 
that but for him the work of my lifetime would 
have come to a close in that London home where 
the illness had stricken me down. The great fact 
now borne in upon my mind was that I must begin 
an entirely new kind of life, and must give up 
all idea of becoming once again a resident in 
London. There was something strange to me in 
the thought that I must restrict my literary work 
to so many hours a day, a very small number of 
hours, divided into two or three portions. Up to 

407 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

the break-down in my health I had always tried 
to get my work done as quickly as possible, and 
to keep at work for as many hours of each day as 
were at my own disposal. It seemed to me rather 
late in the day to enter upon an entirely new sys- 
tem of living, and yet beyond all question only 
that new system could give me any chance of pro- 
longed life. The world seemed to have changed 
its aspect altogether for me, and to have put me 
under absolutely new conditions. 

Of course, if one looked at the prospect with 
calm and philosophic mind, there might not ap- 
pear much to grumble at. I was coming back 
more and more every day to a fair state of strength 
and, except for the weakness of my sight, which 
might possibly not be permanent, I was better in 
physical health than I had been for many years 
before. To live a quiet life on a fine sea-coast, 
with picturesque rising grounds sloping softly 
from the waters and a shelf of marble- white cliffs 
half enclosing one bay, — to live there among 
friends and having other friends within easy reach 
might have been welcomed by an elderly gen- 
tleman as a very enviable manner of existence. 
I could always beguile my leisure time by an 
occasional turn at literary work, and I had good 
hopes that the public would still take an interest 
in my books. Luckily for me, too, the reality of 
the change did not come home to my mind all at 
once, and I still could not help a certain half-con- 

408 



BROKEN HEALTH 

scious feeling that the present condition of things 
was only a restful episode, and that some time or 
other I should go back to my place as an active 
worker in the Irish national cause. Life began to 
go on very smoothly for me, and I became from 
month to month more reconciled to my life of en- 
forced inactivity. I soon was able to walk vigor- 
ously again, and I spent most of my time in the 
open air. Many friends came down from London 
to see me, and I was always kept in touch with 
everything going on in the world of literature and 
art and politics. Some of the old-established and 
quiet residents of the place were occasionally sur- 
prised by the visits paid to Westgate-on-Sea by 
strangers bearing eminent names in these three 
great worlds. The descent into inactivity was 
made gradual and smooth for me. There were 
some residents of our little community whose 
intellectual qualities and whose past experience 
in various forms of active life made them interest- 
ing companions, — the retired soldier, the retired 
sailor, the scholarly clergyman, chaplain to a local 
hospital, the member of Parliament who had made 
the place his regular home when the House of 
Commons was not sitting, — these and others like 
them had made homes and were bringing up fam- 
ilies here, and in their houses I spent many 
pleasant and congenial hours. Before long the 
healthful qualities of the region began to have 
so strengthening an effect upon me that I found 

409 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

myself in a condition to resume my literary work, 
and to congratulate myself on being once again 
a living author, and no longer doomed to the 
monotonous mental quietude or the yet more try- 
ing disquietude of the mere invalid. 



410 



CHAPTER XXIII 

RETIREMENT 

Before long I settled down to my literary work 
once again. My manner of working was, however, 
greatly changed from what it had been since my 
earliest days of authorship. I could no longer do 
any writing for myself, but had to dictate my 
" copy " to a professional typewriter. I had been 
among the first of the authors and journalists in 
England who adopted the typewriter in prefer- 
ence to pen and ink, and the whole of my novel 
"Miss Misanthrope," published in 1877, was ac- 
complished by me through the medium of the 
typewriter. I kept on using it for all the succeed- 
ing years previous to my break-down in health, and 
when I did not work at it myself, I dictated my 
stories and histories to my secretary. Now that I 
was recovering my health and strength at the sea- 
side, I found that the state of my eyes did not allow 
me to try them by typewriting for myself, and I 
once again utilized the services of a professional 
worker for the purpose. 

One of the first products of my returning health 
was to me an especial labour of love. It was a 
book called " Reminiscences," and was published 

411 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

in two substantial volumes by Chatto & Windus 
in London and Harper & Brothers in New York, 
early in 1899. As I had left London in broken- 
down health at the close of July, 1897, the publica- 
tion of " Reminiscences " gave substantial evidence 
that my restoration to health had not been very 
slow, and had not been followed by any long in- 
terval of idleness. The book was dedicated to my 
dear friend the London physician, but for whose 
skill and care I should never have lived to add to 
m}?- stock of pubKshed volumes. The publication 
of my " Reminiscences " recalls to my mind an 
observation which was made to me by an elderly 
resident of Westgate-on-Sea, who was kind enough 
to tell me one day that he had been reading my 
book and was much interested in it. He compli- 
mented me on what he considered my wonderful 
memory, and spoke of the pleasure it gave him to 
read descriptions of distinguished personages by 
an author who had actually seen and known them. 
Then he went on to say : " I suppose, Mr. Mc- 
Carthy, you must have seen and can well remember 
George the Third; I wish you had told us something 
about him." I explained as gracefully as I could 
that Providence had not given me any opportunity 
of looking upon George the Third. As I had 
always pleased my thoughts by fancying that I ap- 
peared rather younger than my actual age, and was 
now somewhat rudely awakened from that beguil- 
ing fancy, I thought it well to change the subject. 

412 



RETIREMENT 

Soon after this I completed two volumes for the 
series entitled " The Story of the Nations," pub- 
lished by Fisher Unwin in London and G. P. 
Putnam's Sons in New York. The first volume 
was called " Modern England before the Reform 
Bill," and the second " Modern England from the 
Reform Bill to the Present Time," and these 
made their appearance in 1899, within two years 
from the date of my settlement in the picturesque 
Isle of Thanet. 

I now began to regard myself as readmitted to 
the order of working authors, and I was gratified 
and not a little surprised that so much could be 
done by working steadily day after day for less 
than two hours in the forenoon and about the 
same time in the afternoon. My self-satisfaction 
was all the greater when I bore in mind that 
all this time I could read nothing for myself, and 
that whatever I wished to learn from books or 
newspapers had to be read aloud to me. To a 
writer engaged in historical works requiring in- 
cessant reference to authorities and comparison 
of dates, it makes, I need hardly say, a very con- 
siderable difference whether he can read for him- 
self or is compelled to have everything read out 
for him. The difference impressed itself on me 
most distinctly when the daily necessity arose for 
obtaining information of the world's doings from 
the newspapers. I was still intensely interested in 
everything going on in the living world, and even 

413 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

if I had not had a literary trade to follow, I never 
could prevail upon myself to dispense with the 
reading of the morning and evening journals. I 
could not do without knowing what was going 
on in political life at home and abroad, and I was 
always anxious to have not merely the actual 
news but also the comments of the leader-writers 
on the news. Now I should like to ask any of my 
readers to make a few experiments in order to 
realise the difference between taking a newspaper 
in his hand, flashing his eyes along its columns to 
see what he thinks it necessary to read and what 
he may leave unread, and the slow process of 
having half a column read deliberately out to him 
before he can decide whether he has had enough 
of that particular column or must hear it to the 
end. We all know with what rapidity the news- 
paper reader can skim over page after page, and 
get into his mind all that he wants. But when 
one has to be read to, there can be no skimming, 
and merely reading out the titles of each piece of 
news or each critical commentary seems often to 
the impatient listener as if it were destined to 
absorb all the time at his command. 

I feel rather proud of the fact that I was able, 
when once I fairly began to recover my health, to 
keep in touch with the passing story of the world 
as told by the leading journals. My interest in 
politics at home, and especially in the doings of 
the House of Commons, never faded for a moment, 

414 



RETIREMENT 

and the progress of our Irish national struggle was 
followed by me with a close and unfailing attention 
from day to day. Some of my political colleagues 
came down from London now and again to visit 
me and talk with me. John Dillon, Edward Blake, 
T. P. O'Connor, Michael Davitt, and others thus 
brightened my retirement; and living not far from 
me in Ramsgate was my old colleague in the 
House, Edward Shell, who had now retired from 
public life. My old friend and former editor, 
Frank Harrison Hill, under whose leadership I 
had been attached to the " Daily News," spent a 
holiday once in our vicinity, and Herbert Paul, the 
distinguished journalist and essayist, made more 
than one stay in Westgate. I felt that I might be 
congratulated on the many happy conditions 
which surrounded and brightened my retirement, 
and I hope I was properly thankful for that 
restoration to health which enabled me to enjoy 
all the many advantages of my new life. Many 
of the brightest days I have ever known were 
spent in that quiet village which I had looked 
upon merely as a temporary refuge, which had in- 
deed seemed like a prison to me when first it was 
made certain that I must not think of leaving it 
for years to come. In sober truth, although I was 
still an invalid and compelled to arrange all the 
details of my daily life accordingly, I positively 
began to feel much younger than I had felt dur- 
ing my later years in London. I do not propose 

415 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

to give my readers a description of the books I 
worked at after my settlement by the sea, but 
there are some of them which may be made the 
subject of a passing notice. I finished in Westgate- 
on-Sea my " History of the Four Georges." The 
first volume of this history was published in 1884. 
The second made its appearance in 1890, so that 
there was an interval of six years between the issue 
of the first and second volume. My incessant Par- 
liamentary work during those years had prevented 
me from giving that steady attention and careful 
preparation indispensable to the production of any 
manner of historical narrative which claims to be 
worth putting on the shelves of a library. After 
the second volume had come out, there was an- 
other long interval, again caused by my absorp- 
tion in political and Parliamentary work, and then 
came the break-down of my health and my conse- 
quent withdrawal from London life. Now that I 
found myself recovering once more and had tested 
my strength by other writings, I resolved to set- 
tle down at once to the completion of " The Four 
Georges." In this task I received the most effec- 
tive help from my son, who spent all the time he 
could spare from London with my daughter and me 
in our seaside retirement. The third and fourth 
volumes, including the reign of William the Fourth, 
appeared in 1901, and the volumes bore on their 
title-pages the names of the two authors who had 
collaborated in their preparation. The three novels 

416 



RETIREMENT 

I wrote in collaboration with my friend Mrs. Camp- 
bell-Praed, and the third and fourth volumes of 
the Georges, were the only volumes I produced in 
literary cooperation. My son was soon destined 
to accomplish a dramatic success, which naturally 
inspired him to give up his whole time to dramatic 
work. He had in previous years made an encour- 
aging success by the writing of plays belonging 
to the order of modern comedy, plays which dealt 
altogether with the ways of social life in the Eng- 
land of our time. In one instance he had taken 
the central idea of his play from a modern French 
comedy, but he had so completely Anglicised the 
scenes and characters as to convert it almost into 
an original English play. This piece, which was 
called " The Candidate," met with a distinct suc- 
cess, and offered much temptation to my son to 
devote himself altogether to light comedy of the 
same order. His own strong and sincere inclina- 
tions were, as I well knew, for the writing of poetic 
and romantic dramas which would carry his audi- 
ences away from the narrow limits of the modern 
stage, and should strive to recall some audiences 
at least to the realms of imagination and of poeti- 
cal feeling. Not long after the publication of the 
two historical volumes which came from our col- 
laboration, he achieved a remarkable success by 
his drama " If I Were King." This play had a 
great reception in the United States and in Eng- 
land, and it became necessary for my son to spend 

417 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

a considerable time in America in order to look 
after the production of his drama. " If I Were 
King " was soon followed by the writing and the 
production of " The Proud Prince," which seems 
to have achieved a yet greater success in the 
United States than its predecessor. My son had 
now found his true literary path, and much as I 
had enjoyed his cooperation in my historical work, 
I welcomed with the most cordial delight the suc- 
cess which had come to him in that field of poetic 
and imaginative drama which it had ever been 
his ambition to cultivate. 

While my son was on the other side of the At- 
lantic, I began my " Reign of Queen Anne," which 
my publishers, Messrs. Chatto & Windus, who 
brought out " A History of Our Own Times " 
and " The Four Georges," had urged me to at- 
tempt. The task was in every way delightful to 
me, but I felt many doubts as to whether I could 
add anything to the many narratives already pub- 
lished in commemoration of the important events 
and the illustrious figures of that most remarkable 
period. It did not, however, need much pressure 
to induce me to venture on a piece of work so 
thoroughly congenial with my historical and liter- 
ary tastes, and I set about my labours with renewed 
energy. I could not help at the time reflecting 
on the somewhat curious fortune which had made 
my historical productions re-trace history from the 
actual present to the already distant past. Most 

418 



RETIREMENT 

writers of history begin with the past and bring 
the story nearer and nearer to the present. I began 
with the story of our own times, of events all of 
which had happened since my birth and many under 
my own observation. When I finished the first 
four volumes of that history, I had no idea of going 
backward into more distant days. After a while, 
however, I undertook the Four Georges, and was 
then advised and encouraged to go still farther 
into the past and venture on the story of Queen 
Anne's reign. I greatly enjoyed my work at the 
Queen Anne narrative, and its two volumes made 
their appearance in 1902. I wrote also about this 
time a small volume called " Ireland and Her 
Story" for" The Story of the Empire " series edited 
by Mr. Howard Angus Kennedy. Soon after I 
brought out a volume called " British Political 
Portraits," a collection in book form of a number 
of articles which originally appeared in New York 
in " The Outlook," under the direction of my 
friend Mr. William B. Howland. My latest work 
is called " Portrait of the Sixties," published in 
London by Mr. Fisher Unwin, at whose sug- 
gestion and to illustrate whose valuable collection 
of photographs the work was undertaken. Nor 
must I forget to mention, even at the risk of 
seeming to advertise myself, the fact that during 
all this busy time I also planned and completed 
a novel called "Mononia." This was an under- 
taking entirely of my own choice. It was a story 

419 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

of the Irish rebellion of " Forty-Eight," and was 
intended to picture through the medium of a love 
tale the conditions, the hopes, and the efforts of 
Young Ireland during that period when I, then 
a youth in my eighteenth year, first became en- 
gaged in a political struggle for the national cause 
of my country. " Mononia " appeared in the first 
instance as a serial in " The Freeman's Journal " 
of Dublin, and was published in London by Chatto 
& Windus. The book was to me a labour of love, 
and I entered on it also with the hope that it might 
give to English and American readers a fair and 
genuine description of Ireland's condition at the 
time, and of the feelings and motives of those who, 
whether wisely or unwisely, believed that it was 
better, even by a desperate policy, to call the at- 
tention of the world to the reality of Ireland's na- 
tional cause than to allow events to drag their slow 
length along without a resolute protest which must 
resound through all the civilized countries of the 
earth. I am afraid that the book was not likely to 
become very popular among English novel-read- 
ers, and I did not expect that it would be much 
in demand at the circulating libraries, but I felt 
well satisfied with the hope that here and there 
some Enghsh men or women might read it and find 
that it appealed to their sympathies with the cause 
of an oppressed nationality, for whose sufferings 
English rule was mainly responsible. Though the 
book never became very popular, I have nothing 

420 



RETIREMENT 

whatever to complain of as to the manner in which 
it was reviewed by the Enghsh journals. Many- 
kindly things were said of it, even in newspapers 
which could not be expected to have any sympa- 
thy with the Irish national cause, and no feeling 
of political prejudice appears to have affected its 
British reviewers. I had put a good deal of my own 
early life and early companionships, and of the at- 
mosphere and scenery by which these were sur- 
rounded, into the novel, although the love story 
was entirely a creature of my imagination. I felt 
in writing it as if I were offering a tribute to the 
memory of the dead and a ^message of encourage- 
ment to the living national cause. 

Thus the months and the years passed away 
in quietude and in work which, although easy 
and purposely made easy, was continuous and 
was never neglected. One event came to pass 
which could not but be regarded as memorable in 
a life like mine. I had at last made up my mind, 
reluctantly, indeed, and only on the pressure of 
wise counsels, that there was no likelihood of my 
being able to return to the work of the House 
of Commons. My constituents of Longford were 
most patient and tolerant, and I believe that if I 
could have formed any hopes of a return within 
a reasonable time to Parliamentary duties, they 
would have allowed me the longest possible period 
of rest, and never expressed any wish for my re- 
signation. But the political period was one of 

421 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

great importance for the Irish national cause, a 
General Election was certain to come soon, and 
in the new Parliament Ireland must have her full 
number of active and constantly attending mem- 
bers in the House of Commons. The Irish Na- 
tional party was now thoroughly united under the 
leadership of John Redmond, and it was abso- 
lutely necessary that the party should show its 
strength in the divisions as well as the debates of 
the House. When the dissolution of the existing 
Parliament was evidently near at hand, I wrote to 
my constituents and announced my intention not 
to seek for reelection. My reasons were easily ex- 
plained. I could not promise constantly to attend 
Parliament, and I could not be the means of de- 
priving my constituents and my country of their 
full representation under existing political condi- 
tions. My Parliamentary career therefore came 
to an end with the General Elections of 1900, and 
I could not but feel that the most important part 
of my life had drawn to its close. I hope I may 
not be considered too egotistical when I say that it 
must ever be to me the brightest memory of my 
working lifetime that I was able to give twenty-one 
years of continuous service, such as it was, to the 
cause of Ireland, that I felt a pride, too, in having 
been so long a member of the House of Commons, 
and that my feeling of personal pride was not less- 
ened by the fact that I had gained nothing in the 
worldly sense, but on the contrary had lost much 

422 



RETIREMENT 

by turning from the quiet paths of literature into 
the excitement and the exhaustion of political and 
Parliamentary warfare. I was not vain enough to 
suppose that I had rendered any substantial ser- 
vice to the Irish national cause, but it was at all 
events something to have served among the repre- 
sentatives of Ireland, and to have shown that I, 
too, could make some sacrifice for her cause. So 
I reconciled myself to my position and bade fare- 
well to Parliamentary life, not, indeed, without a 
regretful glance backwards on the stirring scenes 
which I was now leaving forever. 

Except during the actual months of my com- 
plete break-down from illness, I never ceased to 
contribute a monthly article to " The Independ- 
ent," a New York periodical to which I became a 
regular contributor during my first visit to the 
United States. I had written in the mean time 
some short stories for " Harper's Monthly " and 
other American magazines, and my books had all 
found publishers in America. It gave me none 
the less pleasure to be still one of the writers 
for an American magazine like " The Independ- 
ent," because the fact formed a connecting link 
for me with that country where I had always been 
so well received, and where I had made so many 
dear and valued friends. I have often thought, and 
am afraid have rather often said, that outside my 
own native land there are four cities in any one of 
which I feel sure I should be content to live, and 

423 



AN IRISHMAN'S STORY 

these four cities are London, Paris, Rome, and 
New York. My dealings with American publish- 
ers have always been most satisfactory, and I 
have none but the most genial memories of the 
lengthened visits which I was happily able to pay 
to that great city on the Hudson River where so 
many bright days of my life were passed. 

I now come to an event in my life which was 
utterly unexpected by me, and to which I must 
ever look back with gratitude. In the early part 
of the year 1903 I received from the Prime Min- 
ister, Mr. Arthur James Balfour, the announce- 
ment that King Edward VII was about to confer 
upon me a pension from the Crown because of 
services which the Prime Minister was kind enough 
to say I had rendered to literature. Mr. Balfour 
observed that such a pension had nothing to do 
with political questions, and he added that the 
Ministry had recommended the Royal favour 
without having consulted me on the subject. 
When it is remembered that Mr. Balfour and 
his colleagues formed a strongly Conservative 
Administration, and that during the whole of my 
Parliamentary career I had been an unceasing 
opponent of Conservative policy, it will be seen 
at once how generous and disinterested was their 
action towards me. 

I remain, therefore, a quiet observer of the active 
world and its movements from a distant and 
secluded place of observation. I have seen with 

424 



RETIREMENT 

intense satisfaction the Irish National party be- 
coming more and more thoroughly united in the 
maintenance of the Irish cause and in its methods 
of action towards that end. I have felt, too, an in- 
creasing pride and pleasure in the spread of the 
national spirit throughout Ireland, and in that 
one of its later developments which strives with 
a continually growing success for the revival of 
that ancient language and literature which seem 
to belong to the very atmosphere of Ireland, and 
to be as much a part of her characteristic life as 
are her mountains, her lakes, her green valleys, and 
her rushing rivers. I may say that I have even 
been endeavouring of late to employ some of my 
spare moments for the purpose of making myself 
acquainted with the elements of that which might 
well be considered my native language, but which 
since my boyish days I had never found leisure or 
opportunity to study. I think that with the men- 
tion of this somewhat belated effort on my part, 
the story of this Irishman may be brought to an 
appropriate close. 



425 



INDEX 



American Civil War; see Civil Cobden, Richard, 67, 118, 124, 126,^ 



War in the United States, 

Balfour, Arthur James, 424. 
Beaconsfield, Lord ; see Disraeli. 
Bismarck, Otto von, 131. 
Black, William, 132, 179. 
Blake, Edward, 306, 415. 
Blanc, Louis, 189, 190. 
Bodkin, Matthew, 313. 
Booth, General, 38. 
Boucicault, Dion, 276. 
Brenan, Joseph, 80-82. 
Bright, John, 36, 67, 118, 124, 126, 
134, 140, 141, 159, 161, 253, 257, 

258, 259. 335-337. 368. 
Brooks, Preston, 155, 156, 157, 158. 
Broughton, Miss Rhoda, 334, 
Brown, Ford Madox, 199. 
Browning, Robert, 133, 134, 255. 
Bryant, William Cullen, 147-150. 
Buckingham, Leicester, 133. 
Burns, John, 309. 
Butt, Isaac, 75, 186, 187, 207, 210, 

211, 212, 234. 

Callaghan, George, 107. 
Campbell-Praed, Mr. and Mrs., 301, 

302, 303 ; Mrs., 417. 
Carlyle, Thomas, 133. 
Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 298. 
Chamberlain, Joseph, 298, 311. 
Chapman, Dr. John, 125, 126. 
Chesson, Frederick W., 139. 
Chester, town of, 108. 
Civil War in the United States, 142, 

160-162, 174-176. 



161. 
Coercion in Ireland, 251, 252, 253, 

254, 255-266, 308, 312, 345, 346. 
"Collegians, The," noted Irish 

novel, 3, 275, 276, 277. 
Commune, French, 189, 199, 191. 
Conservatives, 308, 319. 
Cooper, Charles, 139. 
Cork, city of, i, 8, 13, 47, 358, 360, 

361, 362, 363. 
" Cork Examiner," 9, 70, 72, 73. 
Cork Temperance Institute; see 

Mathew, Father. 
Cowen, Joseph, 262. 
Cowper, Lord, 254. 
Crawford, Mr. and Mrs. (Emily), 

192. 
Crimean War, no. 
Cromwell, Oliver, Irish opposition 

to erection of statue in honour of, 

398. 399- 
Crosbie, Thomas, 56-59. 
Curtis, George William, 167. 

"Daily News," London, 178, 179, 

180, 181. 
Davis, Thomas, 14. 
Davitt, Michael, 415. 
Depew, Chauncey, 303, 304. 
Derry, author once elected and 

twice defeated for M. P. for, 292- 

297. 
Dillon, John, son of John Blake 

Dillon, 14, 252, 277, 301, 313, 

345. 346, 377. 383. 384. 386, 388, 

415. 



427 



INDEX 



Dillon, John Blake, 14, 69, 78. 
Disraeli, Benjamin, 238-240. 
Dixon, Hepworth, 143. 
Duffy, Charles Gavan (afterwards 

Sir Charles Gavan), 14, 69, 185. 
Dymond, Alfred Hutchinson, 124. 

Edward VII, King, 424. 

Eliot, George, 180. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 181, 306. 

English people, the, attitude of to- 
ward Irish Nationalist move- 
ment, 309-311. 

Famine in Ireland, as seen by 

author, 63-67 ; political effects of, 

67, 68. 
" Father Prout ; " see Mahony, Rev. 

Francis. 
Fenian movement in Ireland, 186. 
Field, Cyrus W., 142, 143. 
Forbes, Archibald, 132, 179, 180. 
Forster, William Edward, 249, 250, 

251, 252, 253, 254. 
Franco-Prussian War, 180, 181, 189. 
Freeman, Edward A., 255. 
Froude, James Anthony, 255. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 166. 

Gladstone, Herbert, 379. 

Gladstone, Robertson, no, in. 

Gladstone, William E., as a horse- 
man, 118; Chancellor of Ex- 
chequer, speech introducing bud- 
get, 119, 120; as an orator, 159; 
head of Liberal administration, 
249; with Cabinet, releases Irish 
" suspects," 254 ; effort to sup- 
press Obstruction in House of 
Commons, 265; becomes more 
favorably inclined toward Irish 
cause (1885), 291 ; forms Ministry 
and introduces first Home Rule 
measure (1885), 298 ; Ministry de- 
feated (1886), 299; effect on his 
Irish policy of Liberal defection 



of 1886, 300 ; attitude toward 
stern policy of Conservatives in 
Ireland, 308; return to power 
likely to be affected by Parnell- 
O'Shea case, 344, 345 ; anxious 
that Parnell should retire tempo- 
rarily from public life, reasons for 
such anxiety, 347-350 ; last speech 
in House of Commons, 389 ; 
author's last interview with, 390— 
392 ; expresses regrets for disas- 
trous end of Parnell's career, 391 ; 
gives reasons for his own with- 
drawal from Parliamentary life, 
391 ; approves action of author 
regarding proposed statue to Oli- 
ver Cromwell, 399. 

Goulding, John, author's chief 
schoolmaster, 19-32 ; some per- 
sonal characteristics, 19, 20; 
school in Cork, 20 ; system of 
teaching and excellent results, 20- 
28 ; remarkable memory, 26, 27 ; 
encouragement given author on 
leaving school, 29 ; subsequent 
friendship for author, 29, 30; 
death, 30 ; summary of attain- 
ments and life, 30-32. 

Granville, Lord, 15, 180. 

Greeley, Horace, 150-153. 

Griffin, Gerald, 4. 

Hardy, Thomas, 255. 

Harrington, T. M., 345. 

Harte, Bret, 255. 

Hawthorne, Julian, 113. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Ii2, 150. 

Healy, T. M., 366. 

Henessy, Sir John Pope, 52, 53, 

365, 366, 367, 368, 374. 
Hill, Frank Harrison, 178, 179,415. 
Hill, Lord Arthur, 379. 
" History of Our Own Times, A," 

publication of last volume of, 399. 
" History of the Four Georges," by 

author, publication of, 416. 



428 



INDEX 



Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 18 1, 306, 

307- 
Home Rule in Ireland, 186, 187, 
206, 261, 298, 299, 347, 390, 

391- 
Hope-Scott, James, 98, 99. 
Huxley, Thomas H., 255. 

Ireland, condition of, 185, 186, 249, 
251, 252. 

Irish Parliamentary Party, 207, 235, 
236, 239, 249, 256, 257, 262. 

Irish Nationalist Party, 291, 298, 
299. 300. 308. 309. 310, 311, 328, 
336, 340, 341. 342, 344, 346, 350, 
353. 354, 355, 373. 376, 383, 384, 
386, 387, 388, 396, 398, 422, 
425. 

Irish Rebellion of 1848, 68, 77, 78, 
79, 185 ; movement for second, 
79-82. 

Irving, Henry, 256. 

James, Henry, 255. 

Kendals, the, 256. 

Kenealy, Edward Vaughan Hyde. 

40-46. 
Killarney, Lakes of, 272, 273. 

Labouchere, Henry, 262, 311. 
Land Question in Ireland, 206. 
Lawson, Sir Wilfrid, 262, 311. 
Layard, Austen Henry, 98, 127. 
Leamy, Edward, 313. 
Lecky, W. E. H., 255. 
Lee, River, i, 2. 
Lefevre, Shaw, 225. 
Leitrim, Earl of, 379. 
Lewes, George Henry, 180. 
Liberals, 308, 310, 312, 344, 398. 
Liverpool, 107, 108, 109. 
London, 89-96, 424. 
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 

181, 306. 
Longford, County of, author as 

4 



member of Parliament for, 211- 
224, 297, 298; constituency of, 
421. 

Lowell, James Russell, 181. 

Lucas, Samuel, 124, 132. 

Lucy, Henry W., 399. 

MacCarthy, John George, 56. 

Maguire, John Francis, 9, 70, 96, 
97, 99. 185. 

Mahony, Rev. Francis (" Father 
Prout "), 4. 

Mangan, James Clarence, 14. 

Manning, Cardinal, 38. 

Martineau, James, 109. 

Martineau, Miss Harriet, 121, 122. 

Mathew, Father, 33-46 ; founds and 
maintains Temperance Institute 
in Cork, 23> description and 
aims of Institute, 33, 34, 35 ; ef- 
forts in behalf of Institute, 35; 
personal appearance, 36 ; intel- 
lectual endowments, 36 ; as a 
speaker, 36, 37 ; Thackeray's im- 
pressions of, ^j ; author's own 
knowledge of, 37, 38 ; anticipates 
later organisation of Cardinal 
Manning and General Booth, 38 ; 
interested in harmless amusement 
for young people, 39; wonderful 
success of temperance movement 
of, 39, 40; connection with trou- 
bles in Temperance Institute, 40- 
44 ; religious tolerance, 43. 

McCann, Harry, 212-216, 217, 218, 
2ig. 

McCarthy, Justin (author), birth- 
place, I ; boyhood sports and as- 
sociates, 2, 3 ; family household, 
3-8 ; visits to America, 7-8 ; time 
spent with brother Frank, 8 ; 
death of brother, 8 ; death of 
mother, 8 ; necessary to support 
family, 8 ; appointed reporter on 
" Cork Examiner," 9 ; sister en- 
gages in teaching, 9 ; a few words 
29 



INDEX 



as to life of, lo ; associates, liter- 
ary and artistic, lo, 1 1, 12 ; father's 
connection witli " Cork Maga- 
zine," 12; first effort at story- 
writing, 12; sister's contribution 
to "Cork Magazine," 12, 13; re- 
lation of to early Young Ireland 
movement, 14; first attendance 
at school, 17 ; methods of teach- 
ing employed, 17, 18; effect on 
pupils, 18, 19; removed to new 
school under John Goulding, 19; 
recollections of Mr. Goulding^ 
19-32 ; describes Mr. Goulding 
in novel, " Mononia," 20 ; rapid 
progress in studies, 23, 24 ; fond- 
ness for books, 24 ; good know- 
ledge of Latin and Greek, 24 ; 
leaves Mr. Goulding's school and 
begins study of law, 28 ; personal 
knowledge of Father Mathew, 37, 
38; recollections of Edward 
Vaughan Hyde Kenealy, Presi- 
dent of Cork Temperance Insti- 
tute, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46; early 
friends, 47-62 ; associates lovers 
of literature and art, 47 ; lover of 
books, 47 ; enters the world of 
poetry and imagination, favorite 
reading, 49-52 ; experience in 
literary societies, 52 ; forms strong 
friendships, 52-59 ; friends killed 
in American Civil War, 55 ; de- 
sire to travel, 60-62 ; ambition 
for literary career in England, 
60-62 ; limited means, and de- 
mands to be met, 60, 62 ; be- 
comes proficient in shorthand, 
62 ; work as a reporter, 62 ; pub- 
lishes poems, 62 ; special cor- 
respondent in famine-stricken dis- 
tricts of Ireland, 63 ; experiences 
during the famine, 63-66; asso- 
ciates in 1848 mostly join Young 
Ireland Party, 68 ; reporter at 
trial of Smith O'Brien and other 



Irish leaders, 69; reports for 
" Cork Examiner " Meagher's 
speech in Cork, 70, 71, 72; ex- 
perience in reporting state trials 
at Clonmel, 72-77 ; sympathies 
of author and his newspaper 
colleagues with Irish National 
movement, 75; forms acquaint- 
ance of William Howard Russell, 
75 ; many friends of author in 
second attempt at Irish rebellion, 
80 ; convinced of necessity of 
righting Ireland's wrongs by ap- 
pealing to English public opin- 
ion, 82; becomes Home Ruler, 
82 ; yearning for London, 85, 86 ; 
death of sister, 86 ; goes to Lon- 
don (1852), 87 ; first impressions 
of London, 89 ; hears speech by 
Duke of Wellington, 93, 94 ; 
visits House of Commons, 94, 95 ; 
impressions of the London stage, 
95 ; visits historical spots, 96 ; 
ambition to enter Parliament, 
96; sent to London by "Cork 
Examiner," 97 ; hears of escape 
of Thomas Francis Meagher^ 
97, 98 ; kindness shown author 
by John Francis Maguire, 97, 99 ; 
hears speech by Austen Henry 
Layard, 98 ; makes acquaintance 
of Hercules George Robert Rob- 
inson, 100 ; reports proceedings 
of Markets Commission, loi ; ap- 
pointed secretary of Commission, 
loi ; experiences in this position, 
102-106; returns to Cork as re- 
porter for the " Examiner," 106 ; 
accepts position on Liverpool 
paper, becomes literary and dra- 
matic critic and an editorial writer, 
106, 107; work on "Northern 
Daily Times," 107, io8; recrea- 
tions, 108 ; literary ambitions, 
109 ; converses with Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, 112, 113; delivers 



430 



INDEX 



series of lectures, 113-115; be- 
comes regular contributor to 
"The Porcupine," 115; contrib- 
utes to " London Quarterly," 

116, 117; receives medallion for 
article on Schiller, 117; marriage, 

117, 118; strongly impressed by 
Cobden and Bright, 118; sees 
William E. Gladstone, 118 ; re- 
ports Gladstone's speech intro- 
ducing budget, 119, 120; com- 
mended to London " Daily 
News " by Harriet Martineau, 
122 ; fails to secure position on 
"News," 121, 122; secures posi- 
tion on London " Morning Star " 
(i860), 122 ; acquaintance with 
foreign languages, 124; becomes 
foreign editor of " Morning Star," 
124; encouraged by John Stuart 
Mill, 124, 125, 126; gains friend- 
ship of Mill, 126; special corre- 
spondent to coronation of William 
I of Prussia, 127; experiences in 
this capacity, 127-132 ; becomes 
editor of "Morning Star," 132; 
able to give first opportunity to 
writers afterwards famous, 132; 
acquainted with Tennyson, Car- 
lyle, Dickens, and Thackeray, 
133 ; becomes acquainted with 
Robert Browning, 133, 134; early 
novels published, 134-138; pre- 
vious attempt at writing a novel, 
135 ; author of volume of essays, 
138 ; principal colleagues on 
"Morning Star," 139; desire to 
abandon editorship, 139, 140; 
plans for visiting United States, 
141, 142 ; resigns editorship of 
London " Morning Star," 142 ; 
friendship of Cyrus W. Field, 142, 
143 ; sails for America with 
family, 143 ; in America, 144-178; 
meets brother and family, 145 ; 
impressions of New York City, 



145-147 ; hospitality of William 
Cullen Bryant, 147-150; meets 
George Ripley, 150; becomes 
intimately acquainted with Hor- 
ace Greeley, 150; meeting with 
and estimate of Charles Sum- 
ner, 154-162; meets Wendell 
Phillips, opinion of, 162-166; 
makes acquaintance of William 
Lloyd Garrison, 166 ; meets 
George William Curtis, 167 ; an- 
other friend. Bayard Taylor, 167- 
169; acquainted with Whitelaw 
Reid, 169-17 1 ; regular work in 
literature and journalism, 172- 
174 ; contract with Harper & 
Brothers, 173, 174; lectures in 
Cooper Institute, New York, 174- 
176; lectures throughout United 
States, 177 ; visits Salt Lake City 
and Brigham Young, 177, 178; 
continues literary work, 178; fly- 
ing visit to England (1870), 178; 
begins connection with London 
" Daily News," 178, 179 ; pub- 
lishes novel on American life in 
the Atlantic States, 177 ; writes 
many leading articles for " Daily 
News," 180; returns to New 
York, 181 ; often visits Boston 
and makes acquaintance of prin- 
cipal literary men, 181 ; spends 
much time with his brother Frank 
and family, 181 ; regular work as 
a lecturer, 183, 184; strong affec- 
tion for United States, 184, 185; 
considers making home in the 
United States, 185 ; opinion as to 
best remedy for Ireland's political 
wrongs, 187: decides to remain 
a British citizen, 187; declines 
generous offer in United States 
and returns to England (187 1), 
188 ; visits Paris, 189 ; condition 
of Paris, 190; spends much time 
with Louis Blanc, 190, 191, and 



INDEX 



with Mr. and Mrs. Crawford, 192 ; 
returns to London, 192 ; work on 
" Daily News," 193-198 ; notes 
great improvements of late years 
in working arrangements of jour- 
nalism, 198 ; close association 
with some artistic, literary, and 
political circles, 199, 200; educa- 
tion of son and daughter, 200, 
201 ; keeps up interest in writing 
novels and in politics, 201 : makes 
acquaintance of Charles Stewart 
Parnell, 201, 202; begins history 
of Queen Victoria's reign, 202, 
203 ; candidacy for House of 
Commons, 203, 204, 206, 210; 
abandons history of Victoria's 
reign, 204 ; publication of " A 
History of Our Own Times," 205, 
206; career not hampered by 
reason of nationality, religion, or 
politics, 205 ; electioneering cam- 
paign, 211, 212, 2[8-22o; meets 
Christopher Reynolds, 216; 
elected member of Parliament for 
County of Longford, 220; much 
interested in visiting constituency, 
220 ; amusing campaign inci- 
dents, 221, 222, 223; character of 
Longford constituencv, 223, 224 ; 
takes seat in House of Commons, 
225 ; first speech, 225-227 ; work 
in House of Commons, 225-240 ; 
the life of the House of Com- 
mons, 228-234, 237, 238 ; elected 
vice-chairman of Irish Parlia- 
mentary Party, 235 ; difficulty of 
reconciling literary and Parlia- 
mentary duties, 236, 237 ; death 
of wife, 241 ; travels on the Con- 
tinent, 241 ; returns to England 
and resumes work in House of 
Commons, 241 ; travels with son 
and daughter through Continent 
and to the East — impressions of 
principal places visited and inci- 



dents en route, 242-247 , returns 
to England, 247 ; publication of 
novel, " Maid of Athens," 248 ; 
finds struggle begun between 
Irish Nationalists and Liberal 
Government, 249; acquaintance 
witli William Edward Forster, 
249 ; course of Forster in Ireland, 
250-254 ; residences in London, 
255 ; famous acquaintances in 
literary and stage life, 255, 266; 
approves obstruction policy of 
Parnell, 257 ; respect for House 
of Commons, 257 ; view of inde- 
pendence of Ireland, 258 ; deems 
separate Parliament necessary for 
Ireland, 260 ; views on Obstruc- 
tion, 260; occasionally suspended 
from House of Commons, 260 ; 
bad effect on sale of author's 
books, of feeling in England, 260, 
261 ; further account of, and 
views on. Obstruction, 261-266 ; 
holidays in Ireland, 267-282 ; 
frequent visits to Ireland, 267, 
268 ; affection for associations of 
the past, 268 ; addresses many 
meetings in Ireland, 268, 269; 
tour through Ireland, 269-280 ; 
praises Gerald Griffin's novel, 
" The Collegians," 275-277 ; some 
favorite reading, 276, 277 ; son 
elected M. P. for Athlone, 281 ; 
visits Spain with son and daugh- 
ter, incidents of the tour, 283- 
289 ; recalled to Ireland by polit- 
ical exigencies, 2S8, 289 ; short 
stay at Avignon, decorates grave 
of John Stuart Mill, 290 ; re- 
sumes duties in House of Com- 
mons and literary work, 291 ; 
general election of 1885, 292; 
contests Derry — the campaign, 
292-295 ; defeated in first Derry 
contest, 295 ; subsequent defeat 
at polling in Derry, 296; sec- 



INDEX 



ond Derry election contested 
and author declared elected, 297 ; 
represents Derry some years 
in House of Commons, 297 ; de- 
clines second Longford election 
to represent Derry, 297 ; reelected 
M. P. for Longford (1885), and 
again in 1886, 297 ; stands for 
Derry third time and is defeated, 
297 ; again elected M. P. for 
Longford and remains such until 
leaving Parliament, 297, 298 ; 
calls on Joseph Chamberlain with 
Mr. Parnell, regarding Phoenix 
Park murders, 298 ; goes to 
America as emissary of Irish 
Nationalist Party (1886), 301 ; 
voyage and arrival at New York, 
301-303 ; receives many deputa- 
tions, 303 ; entertained at ban- 
quet, 304 ; important meeting at 
Academy of Music, 304, 305 ; 
tour through United States and 
Canada, with speeches and lec- 
tures, 305-307 ; brother's family, 
305, 306; changes among old 
friends, new acquaintances, 306- 
307 ; notable English friends of 
Home Rule Cause, 311; social 
side of life in House of Com- 
mons, 313, 314; receives and 
shows Parnell begging letters 
from Pigott, 314, 315; consid- 
ers Pigott's Parnell letters gross 
forgeries, 315; compares Parnell 
trial with trial of Warren Has- 
tings, 320, 321 ; constantly attends 
sittings of Parnell Commission, 
views of proceedings, 321-324; 
personal experience before Com- 
mission, 324, 325, 326; spends 
several weeks in Algiers, experi- 
ences while there, 330-334 ; re- 
news acquaintance with Miss 
Rhoda Broughton, 334; returns 
to London, 334 ; eulogy on John 

433 



Bright before House of Com- 
mons, 336, 337 ; scrambles for 
copy of report of Parnell Com- 
mission, 337, 338 ; the Parnell- 
O'Shea case, 342-344 ; visits 
Boulogne to consult colleagues, 
346 ; acquaints Parnell with Glad- 
stone's views as to former's re- 
tirement, 349 ; tries to avoid giv- 
ing Parnell false impressions, 349, 
350 ; protests without success 
against issue of Parnell 's mani- 
festo, 350-352; elected chairman 
of majority faction of Irish Na- 
tionalist Party, difficulties of the 
office, 355-357 ; visit to Cork for 
political demonstration, experi- 
ences there, 357-363 ; expedition 
to Kilkenny, Sir John Pope Hen- 
essy, 365-369 ; goes to Bou- 
logne, 369; personal relations 
with Parnell, 370-372; reasons 
for accepting party leadership, 
376-378 ; necessity for keeping 
up literary work, 378; member 
of executive committee of West 
Kensington Exhibition, financial 
loss incurred, 378-383 ; owing to 
financial losses, gives up party 
leadership, 383 ; proposes John 
Dillon for leadership of party, 
384; continues attendance at 
House of Commons, 384 ; literary 
work, and lecturing in England, 
384, 385 ; declines offer to lecture 
in Australia, 385; Gladstone's 
last speech in House of Com- 
mons, 389, 390; long acquaint- 
ance with Gladstone and feel- 
ing of loss at his retirement, 392, 
393; broken health, 394-410; 
inconvenience of life in Chelsea 
and removal to Eaton Terrace, 
394-396 ; two visits to Ireland, 
396 ; attends National Conven- 
tion in Dublin, 396; last speech 



INDEX 



in House of Commons, 398, 399 ; 
publication of last volume of "A 
History of Our Own Times," 399 ; 
serious illness, cause and pro- 
gress, 400-402 ; convalescence, 
residence at Westgate-on-Sea, 
402, 403, 404, 405, 408, 409; re- 
gards retirement as but tempo- 
rary, 403, 404; impairment of 
sight, 405, 406; change in work 
and habits, 407-410; kindness of 
friends, 408, 409; dictates "copy " 
to typewriter, 411 ; retirement, 
411-425; publication of "Remi- 
niscences," 412 ; publication of 
two volumes on modern Eng- 
land, 413; has all books and pa- 
pers read aloud, 413, 414; keeps 
in touch with leading journals and 
politics, 414; visits from friends, 
pleasant days, 415; still an in- 
valid, 415; finishes with son's 
help "History of the Foui 
Georges," 416; preparation and 
publication of " Reign of Queen 
Anne " and several other works, 
419 ; decides not to reenter House 
of Commons and so advises con- 
stituency (1900), 421, 422; retro- 
spect, 422-424; feeling toward 
United States, 423, 424 ; now a 
quiet observer of the active world, 
424 ; four favorite cities, 424 ; 
Crown pension for services to 
literature, 424 ; deep interest in 
all pertaining to Ireland, 425. 

McCarthy, Justin, nephew of au- 
thor, 8. 

McCarthy, Justin Huntley, son of 
author, 281, 282, 416-418. 

Meagher, Thomas Francis, 69, 70, 
71, 72, 76, 77, 303. 

Meredith, George, 328, 329. 

Mill, John Stuart, 124, 125, 126, 161, 
290. 

Mitchel, John, 82-84. 

434 



Modern England, publication of 
author's two volumes on, 413. 

Moore, Thomas, 4. 

Morley, John, 142, 398. 

Mormon community. Salt Lake 
City, 177, 178. 

" Morning Star," London newspa- 
per, 121, 122, 123-143; character 
and policy of, 123, 124 ; methods 
of, 126, 127; principal writers on, 

139- 
Morris, William, 199. 
Moulton, Fletcher, 382. 

National Convention of Irishmen 
in Dublin, 396. 

Newman, John Henry, 109, no. 

New York City, 145-147, 424. 

" Northern Daily Times," Liver- 
pool, 106, 107, 119, 120, 121. 

O'Brien, Smith, 69, 72, 76, 77, 78. 
O'Brien, William, 313, 345, 346, 377, 

388- 
Obstruction policy of Irish Nation- 
alists, 208, 209, 210, 236, 257, 260, 

309. 310. 3"- 
O'Connell, Daniel, 14, 68, 270, 271. 
O'Connor, Arthur, 359. 
O'Connor, T. P., 301, 313, 345, 377, 

415- 
O'Gorman, Richard, 303. 
O'Reilly, John Boyle, 306. 
O'Shea, Mrs., 343. 
Ottoman power ; see Turks. 

Palmerston, Lord, 134. 

Parnell, Charles Stewart, early in 
his Parliamentary career, 201, 
202 ; beginning to influence Irish 
Nationalists, 204; increasing in- 
fluence and policy of, 207-210; 
becomes leader of Irish Nation- 
alist Party, 235 ; imprisoned as a 
"suspect," 252; released, 254; 
considers Obstruction merely a 



INDEX 



means to an end, 261 ; gains great 
majority of Irish Nationalist 
representatives and impresses 
on English people true purpose 
of Obstruction, 262 ; conspicuous 
figure at public meetings, 271 ; 
presented with the freedom of 
Dublin, 277-279; with Irish Na- 
tionalist Party, helps to overthrow 
Salisbury ministry (1885), 291 ; 
with colleagues, wishes author to 
stand for Derry (1885), 292 ; with 
author, consults Joseph Chamber- 
lain as to Phoenix Park murders, 
298 ; with colleagues, sends au- 
thor to America to carry message 
of Irish Nationalist Party as to 
Home Rule cause, 300; address 
of, at farewell dinner to author 
(1886), 301 ; dislike for general 
society, 310 ; shown by author 
several letters from Pigott, 315; 
impossible for hun to have written 
Pigott letters, 315-317; utterly 
opposed to acts of violence, 317 ; 
repudiates Pigott letters in House 
of Commons, 318; statement of 
regarding Pigott letters cheered 
in House of Commons, 319; on 
trial before Commission, 320 ; at- 
tempt to connect him with crime 
in Ireland, 321-325; acquitted 
by Commission Court, 338, 339 ; 
secures damages from "The 
Times," 340 ; reception by House 
of Commons after acquittal by 
Commission, 341 ; as co-respond- 
ent in O'Shea divorce case, 342- 
344; best course for, in view of 
divorce case, 344, 345 ; reelected 
chairman of Irish Nationalist 
Party, 346 ; question of his tem- 
porary retirement from political 
life, 347-350 ; manifesto, 350- 
352, 356; refuses to retire from 
leadership, 352, 353; holds only 



small following after split in Irish 
Nationalist Party, 354; manifesto 
of, fatal to immediate success of 
Home Rule cause, 356; senti- 
ment toward, among Irish Na- 
tionalists after issue of manifesto, 
356-357; great popular support 
in Cork city and county, 358; 
temperate habits of, 368 ; health 
injured by overwork, 371-374; 
friendly relations with author, 
370-372 ; death of, 374 ; author's 
estimate of, 374, 37 5> 377 ; inem- 
bership on executive committee 
of West Kensington Exhibition, 
declined by, 378, 379; incident 
connected with, in committee 
room, 387. 

Parnell Commission, 308-329; re- 
port of (1890), 337.338. 339. 341. 

Paul, Herbert, 415. 

Peel, Sir Robert, 67. 

Phillips, Wendell, 162-166. 

Phoenix Park murders, 298. 

Pigott, Edward F. S., 180. 

Pigott, Richard, 314, 315, 316, 329, 

334. 335- 
Poe, Edgar Allan, 184. 
Pre-Raphaelites, school of, 199. 

Queenstown harbour, 2. 

Redmond, John, 356, 388, 422. 

Reid, Whitelaw, 169-171, 304. 

" Reminiscences " of author, publi» 
cation of, 414. 

Reynolds, Christopher, 216. 

Robinson, Hercules George Robert, 
100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106. 

Robinson, John R. (afterwards Sir 
John R.), 179. 

Robinson, Miss Mabel, 270, 271, 
273, 274, 280. 

Robinson, Sir John, 202. 

Rosmead, Lord; see Robinson, Her- 
cules George Robert. 



435 



INDEX 



Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 199. 

Russell, Countess, widow of Lord 
John Russell, 311. 

Russell, Edward (afterward Sir Ed- 
ward), 139. 

Russell, Lady Agatha, 311. 

Russell, Sir Charles (afterward 
Lord Russell of Killowen), 320, 

329. 334- 
Russell, William Howard, 75. 

Salisbury, Lord, 291, 299. 
Schoolmaster, author's principal, 

16-19; see also Gonldiag, ]6h.n. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 4. 
Sexton, Thomas, 252, 292, 313, 318, 

346, 366, 377. 
Shaw, William, 235. 
Smith, Goldwin, 161. 
Spencer, Herbert, 255. 
State trials at Clonmel, 69, 72, 75, 

76. 77- 
Staveley, Dr. W. H., 401, 402, 407, 

412. 
Steele, Anna Cora, 255. 
Sullivan, Maxwell, 53-55. 
Sullivan, T. D., 345. 



Sumner, Charles, 154-162. 
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 199. 

Taylor, Bayard, 167-169. 
Temperance Institute ; see Mathew, 

Father. 
Tennyson, Lord, 133. 
Terry, Ellen, 256. 
Thackeray, William M., 133. 
Thomond, Marquis of, 69. 
Tinsley, William, 143. 
Toole, John Lawrence, 256. 
Turks, no. 

Wallis, Thomas, cousin of author, 

55- 
Wellington, Duke of, 92, 93. 
West Kensington Exhibition, 378- 

383- 
Whiteing, Richard, 132, 179. 
Whiteside, James, 75. 
Wilson, Edward D. J., 139. 
Wyndham, Charles, 256. 

Yates, Edmund, 133. 
Young Ireland movement, 13, 14, 
63-84, 68, 69. 



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